shmula » Customer Service

Call Center Services: Delight the Customer

Pete Abilla — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:20:24 +0000

Great customer service is becoming more and more common as companies become more and more aware that investing in great customer experiences is actually good for business. But, it’s rare that a great customer service experience becomes viral and brings incredible goodwill and public relation for the company involved.

A customer named Brian serving a humanitarian mission in Tanzania got on a customer service live chat with an Amazon agent. Brian shared with the chat agent that USPS had lost his books and was wondering if he could reorder those same books. To his surprise, the Amazon live chat agent offered to send him his order AND also refund his money back to him.

Brian’s response?

He said the to chat agent “You are rocking my world right now. Can I post this chat on Reddit?”

Well, that’s exactly what Brian did. He posted the image of his chat on the social site Reddit and it got over 1200 positive votes, over 500 comments, and the attention of everybody on Twitter and got the attention of CBS, ABC, Huffingtonpost, and others.

Yes, a simple chat image.

But, a great customer experience where the chat agent recovered a bad customer experience beautifully.

click on live chat below to see entire chat

Call Center Services: Delight the Customer is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Your Service is Terrible

Pete Abilla — Mon, 23 May 2011 11:15:49 +0000

I was recently sent a survey about customer service and my thoughts on how to bet provide customer service. One of the question in the survey was interesting:

One of your customers has just said to you, “The service here is terrible.” You should say:

What is it about the service that you have not liked?
Would you like to fill out a complaint form? I can get one for you.
I realize our service is poor today. We are understaffed, so I apologize.
I am really sorry to hear you say that, but we are trying as hard as we can.

Terrible Customer Service

A quick google search on the phrase “Customer Service” will return results like the following:

TMobile Customer Service Sucks
ATT Customer Service Complaints
Poor Customer Service

And on, and on, and on. If google queries and google searches represent the overall sentiment of the people searching them, then google searches on “Customer Service” says that we are, overall, not very happy with it.

In sharp contrast, Zappos.com asked on its Facebook Wall the following question:

At Zappos.com everyone in the company strives to deliver the very best customer service to our customers as well as our coworkers. Is there an establishment you frequent often (Stores, Restaurants, Etc.) because you enjoy the customer experience they provide? (Please, no bad mouthing. We only want to hear about GREAT customer service!)

To which the question received over 100 responses. Here are a few companies that deliver wonderful customer service, according to the respondents:

Cindy Daniel Condos www.diapers.com – great for anyone who has a baby/toddler. Free overnight shipping for orders over $50, great selection of everything for baby (not just diapers) at great prices (cheaper than Costco). I was bitter that I didn’t know about them until my daughter was 6 mos old!).
Bill Stanton Stew Leonards in Norwalk CT. His motto is Rule #1 “The Customer is Always Right!” Rule #2 Re-read Rule #1
Lorraine Lescroart Frank I have to brag about my own job. I am a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines and we’ve been voted the best customer service serveral times….:-)
Justin Van Gundy this may sound funny but Valvoline oil change has the best customer service and they are all extremely friendly. They are a lot more expensive than most but I continue to take all my vehicles there. It’s a major turn off when you are being helped by an employee with a less than enthusiastic attitude.
Kelly Brockette ok, I am surprised no one else has mentioned Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, MI. Zingermans.com. they have reached a HUGE number of people in the almost 30 years they have been in business and surpass anyone customer service-wise! check them out!!!
Tamara Edson STARBUCKS! I have about four of them that I frequent regularly and always get great service. Of course ZAPPOS ROCKS when it comes to customer service too!
Lorenzo Gomez III montblanc. I went in there to buy a pen for an old latin teacher of mine that won an award. Not only were they super helpful but about a week later i got a hand written note in the mail asking if my teacher had enjoyed the gift. customer for life. boom
Karen Cammarata Customer service? What’s that?! I live an hour north of NYC and nobody here seems to care about anybody but themselves. I love traveling down south/out west b/c the attitudes are incredible and you leave feeling really crappy about the east coast. The only stores we get decent (and that’s even a stretch) customer service at are Bed Bath and Beyond, Best Buy and sometimes Target. I know, you only wanted to hear about GREAT customer service, but I really think Zappos can provide a platform for other companies to build on. Bottle up that awesomeness and sell it to other retailers!!!
Lance Beres IKEA!!!! Hands down an awesome store. Great customer service and selection within everyone’s budget.

How would you answer the question above? I’m curious.

Your Service is Terrible is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Overdoing Customer Service

Pete Abilla — Thu, 05 May 2011 13:26:56 +0000

We often hear customer service quotes about “great customer service” or “poor customer service” – especially in the media regarding ATT Customer Service and Qwest Customer Service, but we don’t hear very often “customer service was too good.”

Until now.

Stanley Bing, wrote recently about his experience with Toyota Customer Service. For him, it was too good.

Bing is an avid Toyota customer, owning several Toyota cars himself. But, a recent purchase of a Toyota RAV4 made him rethink his relationship with Toyota.

You general manager congratulated me on my purchase. I was happy to hear from her, though her tone was a little ominous: “Our interest in your satisfaction is just the beginning.” she wrote. “We look forward to a continuing relationship, and it is our sincere desire that you remain completely satisfied.” This made me a tiny bit uneasy. Who can offer complete satisfaction in this life?

Next came the personal email from Ned, my salesperson, “Since you’ve placed your confidence with us,” he wrote, “everyone here at Toyota realizes that your satisfaction is the key to our future.” Really? I don’t want that kind of responsibility!

Of course, Bing is saying all of this in jest, but it goes to show how some companies could possibly go overboard. Again, it reinforces the fact that any virtue taken too far can become a vice.

For those who value great customer service skills, overdoing customer service might be one to think about.

I’m sure Stanley Bing will remain a Toyota customer, but he’d probably go without all the love and affection and rather be left to himself and his new car.

Overdoing Customer Service is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Obvious Advice: Don’t Insult the Customer

Pete Abilla — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 13:08:46 +0000

Here’s some obvious advice: Don’t Insult the Customer. That’s good advice for everybody in a company, but that is great advice especially for the CEO. It can clearly impact customer retention as well as customer acquisition. While it’s common sense, it looks like Daniel Akerson, the CEO of General Motors (GM) hasn’t heard that advice before.

In a recent speech, he said the following about the customers who have bought the Toyota Prius:

We commonly refer to the geek-mobile as the Prius. And I wouldn’t be caught dead in a Prius.

Denigrating a competitor is one thing, but calling the competitor’s customers “geeky”, while not a huge insult, gives us a glimpse into his worldview that might go something like this:

If you bought a Toyota Prius, you are geeky.
Daniel Akerson would never be caught dead in a Toyota Prius.
Therefore, Daniel Akerson is not Geeky.

The upshot of the Daniel Akerson’s awkward logic might be this:

If you are a person who is not like Daniel Akerson, you are inferior.

I don’t think that last statement is a logical leap – he clearly has something against geeks and makes a strong point that he’s not a geek.

Weird.

How To Treat the Customer

As I said, fighting words against a competitor is fine, but against the competitor’s customers is not wise. Moreover, I’d venture to guess that many of customers that own a Toyota probably also own a General Motors vehicle.

While “geek” is not a massive insult, it is a form of judgment. And, public judgment coming from the mouth of a CEO is not prudent or wise. If he can be like that in public, how are people treated inside the walls of GM?

And, no, what he said is not opinion – it is judgment. Opinion is usually supported by facts and feelings. What Daniel Akerson said is a form of judgment because he, in effect, is demonizing the customers that have bought a Toyota Prius by putting them in a convenient bucket and labeling them a “geeky”.

General Motors (GM) Bailout

Let’s revisit the history of GM, including the GM Bailout. Below is a rough top-level summary (source: http://goo.gl/PCQqx):

GM is still Government Motors.
The US Government converted $45.3 billion in loans to a 70% ownership position.
The Canadian Government converted an $8.1 billion stake into 12% ownership.
GM lost $3.4 billion in the 4th quarter of 2009.
GM still has $15 billion in debt.
GM has $27 billion in unfunded pension liabilities.

Now here is a more comprehensive timeline, from the same source as above:

$12 billion: The amount of money General Motors (GM) requested in a loan plan submitted to U.S. Treasury Department on Dec. 2, 2008, according to CNN. Ten days later, GM submitted an updated version of the plan requesting $22.5 billion in funding.
$50 billion: The amount of total bailout money GM has received from American taxpayers since 2008, according to CBS News.
$7.4 billion: The amount of money, including interest and dividends, the government has recovered from GM thus far, according to The New York Times.
$34: The initial public offering for GM shares this afternoon. Forbes predicted the IPO would be “likely to wind up as the largest initial public offering in history Wednesday and for the U.S. Treasury.”
$23.1 billion: The amount of money raised by the IPO, according to The New York Times.
1.6, 1.7 and 1.8 percent: The percentage rise today in the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq composite, respectively.
1.4 million: The number of jobs saved by the government bailout of General Motors, Chrysler and other car companies, according to the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.
“Several years”: The amount of time GM CEO Dan Akerson said it would take for the company to pay back taxpayers.
$1.7 million: Akerson’s yearly salary. He also receives $5.3 million in GM stock.
$12,200: The cost, per car, of the GM bailout to taxpayers, according to a report by the National Taxpayer’s Union.
3.8: The number of retired workers or dependents for every active worker at GM, according to the Heritage Foundation. In comparison, there are two dependents at Chrysler and 1.6 at Ford. This means GM dependents face a higher burden than those at other companies.
$2,000: The cost of features that American companies need to cut from their cars to compete with foreign companies, according to Mitt Romney’s estimate in 2008.

As you can see above, GM is not out of the woods yet; for a company that is largely still owned by the US Government, why is the CEO of General Motors, Daniel Akerson, actiing so haughty? The truth is, he can’t afford to treat any customer poorly.

Lesson Learned: Don’t Insult the Customer.

Obvious Advice: Don’t Insult the Customer is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Root Causes of Lost Business Relationships

Pete Abilla — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:42:51 +0000

GetSatisfaction ¹ recently came out with a great infographic showing what, in their research, are the reasons why companies lose customers.

Below is a summary of why customers leave companies:

68% Leave because of the treatment the customer received
14% Leave because the customer is dissatisfied with product or service
9% Leave because the customer begins doing business with the competition
5% Leave because the customer seeks alternatives
3% Leave because the customers move away
1% Leave because the customer dies

Then came this fascinating summary of the effect of poor customer service:

In 2009, 71% of customers ended their business relationships because of poor customer service and customers ended an average of 2.1 business relationships.

Root Causes of Lost Business Relationships

The customer has to repeat themselves to the customer service agent
The customer is trapped in automated self-service
The customer is forced to wait too long for service
The customer service representative doesn’t know the customer’s history of value
The customer cannot switch between channels easily

The rest of the infographic is below.

blog.getsatisfaction.com/2010/10/04/fastest-way-to-lose-customers/ ↩

Root Causes of Lost Business Relationships is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Stating the Obvious: Call Center Frustrations Leads to Lower Revenue

Pete Abilla — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 13:29:10 +0000

Yes, you heard it here first: A Poor Customer Service Experience will likely lead to customers shopping elsewhere and, therefore, reduced customer loyalty and lower revenues. Okay, I wasn’t the first to say that, but this fact is obvious to most of us. Yet, study after study, is published revalidating what we’ve known for years.

Such is the case with a recent report from Internet Retailer ¹. Here’s what they report:

The report, “‘Could you repeat that please?’: The costs and impact on the customer experience of poor voice quality,” is based on a survey of 3,925 consumers in the United States, U.K., Germany and France.

The survey found that 42% of all contact center calls are affected by voice-related issues. That can be problematic, says the report, because 68% of consumers say they hang up if they have trouble understanding an agent, and if they’re calling about a new product or service they are likely to call a competing company instead.

Customer Service that suffer from poor voice quality or from customer service agents that do not speak the native language of the customer, the study shows, will likely lead to the customer hanging up and calling a competitor.

This finding has implications for outsourcing services – most call centers are outsourced to lower cost areas such as the Philippines, India, or elsewhere.

Lower Cost, Lower Revenue

So, in the outsourcing bandwagon that many companies are jumping on, it is important to remember that chasing lower cost with the language-conflict tradeoff, will probably mean customers fleeing your service.

http://www.internetretailer.com/2010/09/22/call-center-frustrations-may-cause-consumers-shop-elsewhere ↩

Stating the Obvious: Call Center Frustrations Leads to Lower Revenue is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Dear Mass Market: Promoter or Detractor

Pete Abilla — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:30:12 +0000

I received an email recently from Qwest Communications requesting that I complete a survey. I read the email, then the signature had the executive’s name, which caught my eye:

Dan Yost
Executive Vice President
Mass Markets

Is that what I’ve become? A Mass Market? Does Qwest really call their customers “Mass Market”?

Here’s that email:

Dear Valued Customer,

As part of our commitment to improve your experience with our product, services and people, I am asking for your assistance in providing valuable feedback by participating in our Customer Relationship Survey.

Your opinion is extremely valuable to us, and the information collected from the survey will be reviewed and acted upon by Qwest as part of our continuous improvement efforts.

Satmetrix, a leading provider of customer experience management solutions, will be conducting the survey on our behalf. The survey will take about 5-8 minutes to complete. To access the questionnaire, please click here.

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

Yours sincerely,

Dan Yost
Executive Vice President
Mass Markets

The irony in all of this is this: the incredibly impersonal, corporate-speak email is about a customer relationship survey asking for Net Promoter Score from Satmetrix information – on whether I’d recommend Qwest to a friend.

Message or Messenger

It’s clearly both. The message that Qwest sent is impersonal; the messenger’s job title puts me squarely amongst millions of other blob-like customers – heck, we’re a Mass Market; kind of akin to “a bunch of customers” or “a grundle of people” or “revenue producing population” – you know, all really warm and fuzzy labels that repel rather than create loyalty.

To their credit, they probably recognize that Qwest Customer Service and Qwest products aren’t very good and that there is wholesale Detractors (NOT Promoters) for Qwest.

At least they are trying.

How Qwest Can Improve

Simple measures can make a big difference.

Instead of “Dear Customer”, how about using a variable that inserts the customer’s first name instead. That would be more personal and show that you might care a little bit.
The title “Mass Markets” is just so impersonal. Even as an internal job title, it’s just not good – I’m sure there are human resource professionals that would agree with me on this point. Regardless, if Qwest chooses to keep that as an internal job title, at least don’t announce it in the signature of a huge email campaign. ”Mass Markets” – please.

I think if Qwest had done my two suggestions above, it would’ve been a much better email communication. And, heck, the content of the email might actually be more aligned with the spirit and intention of the email.

Below are screenshots of the Qwest Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey:

Dear Mass Market: Promoter or Detractor is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Using 5 Whys to Write Customer Support Help Pages

Pete Abilla — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:59:11 +0000

Customer Support Help Pages is a self-service method for the customer to resolve his or her own concern without having to chat with a customer service agent, call customer service, or email customer support.

Sometimes, self-help methods are not very helpful. But, one way to make them more helpful than they are is to apply the Five Whys (5 Whys).

5 Whys and Customer Support

Five Whys or Root Cause Analysis is a perfect complement and aid in writing customer support help pages. But, in actual implementation, there will be several steps that will be kept encapsulated or hidden from the customer because it’s added complexity that they don’t need to know about or care to know about. Also, rather than starting with a defect, the customer perspective will almost always begin with a question.

Here’s an example:

Why does my Dell XPS 7100 Desktop unexpectedly crash, blue screen of death?
Because graphics card driver that was updated recently is not compatible with the current Windows 7 sound driver. Why?
…it doesn’t really matter, from the customer’s perspective.
…they just want a solution. So,
Update the Windows 7 Sound Driver to be compatible with the current updated graphics card driver.

Several steps in the root cause analysis are important for the content creators of customer support help pages, but the customer doesn’t need to know them or really care. Indeed, we must protect the customer from the unnecessary complexity.

But, the 5 Whys can be a good exercise to frame our thinking around the right structure for help pages.

A Case Study: NuDred Hair Twisting Device

I’m not black, but I have four kids that are. Caring for Black hair is a big deal and a lot of work. Recently, my wife bought NuDred, a Hair Twisting Device, thinking that it would make our kids’ hair look nice and allow my wife to do it in a shorter amount of time.

In the NuDred package we received, also came this checklist that illustrates what I share above:

What it says in customer support help pages language is:

Why is there difficulty twisting?
Because Hair is too damp
Because Hair is not damp enough
Because too much pressure with circular motion
Because too little pressure with circular motion
Hair too long (one inch maximum length for NuDred)
Need new NuDred (your is worn)

Essentially, NuDred skipped the middle steps in the 5 Whys and jumped straight to the solution. But, this is appropriate, since the customer doesn’t want to be bombarded with information they don’t need or want. The customer just wants a solution.

Using 5 Whys to Write Customer Support Help Pages is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Just Dial “0″ (“Zero”)

Pete Abilla — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:16:43 +0000

On the way to work this morning, a commercial on National Public Radio (NPR) caught my attention. It was a commercial for Ally Bank and one phrase piqued my interest (I’m paraphrasing):

To open an account, call xxx-xxx-xxxx and to talk to a real person, push “0″ anytime.

In the radio commercial, they emphasized “real person”. Interesting.

In a time when most companies are running away from their customers, Ally Bank is running toward them. I think that’s admirable and smart business.

To be clear, I’m not recommending Ally Bank and I’m not a customer – I have actually never heard of them until this morning. But they clearly recognize that, in today’s climate, the populous are not pro-big bank and there is a lot of distrust and low confidence in institutions that were supported by the very customers that they let down. This is just a fact that companies need to recognize and create a sustainable strategy to overcome this perception.

It appears that Ally Bank is doing just that by differentiating themselves as “different” than the rest of the banks; “straightforward banking” is their mantra. It’s a smart marketing move and one I think customers will appreciate. In their words:

We talk straight. We don’t hide behind confusing jargon and fine print. We’ll always tell it to you straight. Because we believe it starts and ends with the customer.

We do right by you and your money. No minimum deposits or balances required. No hidden fees or penalties, either. We’re committed to finding the pain points in banking and fixing them so your money works harder every day.

We work to help you save more than other banks. We keep our overhead low, our rates competitive, and design every Ally product to maximize your savings.

Don’t run away from the customer – it’s not good business. It’s also practical wisdom that most people and companies forget:

common sense, but not common practice.

Just Dial “0″ (“Zero”) is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Customer Service – A Chance for Redemption

Pete Abilla — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:21:07 +0000

In a very tough economy, keeping customers happy should have more considerable weight and attention from companies. I had a negative customer experience recently at Home Depot, where they had a chance to redeem themselves from a very poor customer experience.

On March 18, 2009, I went to Home Depot to buy some tools to help my son with his Boy Scout Pinewood Derby car. I’m completely unskilled when it comes to tools or wood carving, so I needed help. I asked someone at Home Depot to help, but the person I asked was very irritated at me and sent me to another department. At that department, the associate said: “sorry, can’t help you.” It turns out, I just needed sand paper and a hand saw, which my neighbor let me borrow.

Following that experience, I sent this Tweet:

I have 296 people following me on Twitter and all my Twitter updates also updates my Facebook page, where I have 350 friends. So, ~600 people saw that Tweet. Six people responded to that Tweet on my Facebook page:

So, negative word-of-mouth from 1 negative experience quickly reached ~600 people. We know from Net Promoter Score (NPS) studies that a Detractor is quite costly to a company, with some studies showing that a Detractor carries a Net Cost of at least $300 USD, not to mention the 600 people that my negative word-of-mouth reached. The same study shows that a Promoter carries a Net Benefit of $1,700 USD.

Moreover, this blog has 1359 Feed Subscribers and an average daily visitor count of 930 unique visitors. So, 1359+296+350+930 = 2935 people are quickly reached from one negative word-of-mouth experience.

So, 1359+296+350+930 = 2935 people are quickly reached from one negative word-of-mouth experience.

In this economy — no, in any economy — a firm cannot risk having negative word-of-mouth or risk producing a bad customer experience: not good for the customer; not good for company.

A Chance for Redemption

My original tweet above, however, caught the attention of Home Depot, to which they responded with the Tweet below:

My initial reaction was very positive — wow, Home Depot monitors Twitter and responds quickly to negative word-of-mouth in the Twitter stream.

I sent @HomeDepot a direct message, containing my email address; I didn’t receive a response for a while, then I received the Tweet below:

The Tweet was followed-up with an email, which is below:

Pete – I’m very sorry to hear that you were treated so poorly. Which store did you visit? I take your experience very seriously and would like to pass your comments along to our store and local leadership.

We are making improvements across the board, but it takes feedback from customers like you to make direct changes in specific stores, send additional resources, etc…

Also, I’ve alerted our Customer Care team, who may contact you as well to resolve this matter and thank you properly for taking the time to give us this feedback.

Please let me know where this happened, and if it’s a normal occurrence at that location, or something unique to this visit.

XXX XXX, Corporate Communications Manager

The Home Depot

I responded to @homedepot’s email with my detailed experience on March 20, 2009. Since then, no feedback or response.

Lessons Learned

Most customers are charitable and give companies the benefit of the doubt; most customers are willing to give several chances to a company. I’m certainly in this camp.
This means that, from the firm’s perspective, there is ample chance to win-back customers through simple empathy, listening, and reaching-out, not necessarily by giving of anything monetary.
If you are going to have an outreach effort like Home Depot above, execution is key. This means that the initial outreach must reach a conclusion. This is where Home Depot fails. They made a good effort, but no conclusion was reached. I’m happy they reached-out to me, but no feedback was given regarding the negative experience I shared with them.
Monitor Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. Negative word-of-mouth can quickly diffuse to millions of users. My single negative word-of-mouth tweet quickly reached ~600 people. Most likely, some of those ~600 people will not purchase or recommend Home Depot, because of my negative word-of-mouth experience.

Insult to Injury

One more word of advice: a customer’s 1st negative experience can be considered “injury”. Customer Service can take on a balming effect or it can add “insult” to the initial “injury”. Keep this in mind as you frame your Customer Experience strategy.

Hippocratic Oath for Customer Experience

“Do No Harm” ought to be our mantra; “Do No Further Harm” is a great one to have as well.

Customer Service – A Chance for Redemption is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

When Self-Help Does Not Help

Pete Abilla — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:03:41 +0000

I’d venture to say that most people don’t have a desire to call customer service. If one ever got lucky enough and passed the Interactive Voice Response (IVR), the customer service representative (CSR) is sometimes not all that helpful (like the time I spoke with Qwest Customer Service, my post about Qwest). But, getting passed the IVR — the spaghetti-diagram-like IVR — is the first challenge.

Recently, I came across an iphone application called Direct Line, which automates the IVR process and brings the customer straight to the customer representative. In other words, instead of pressing #2, #3, #0, #0, #0, the iphone application does all of that for you and takes you straight to a human customer service representative.

In their words,

When you load up the app, you’re looking at a straight list of company names. You never really see more than just that when using Direct Line, but pressing on any company will immediately exit the app and launch a phone call. The phone number it calls may just have an extra digit at the end of it or sometimes nothing at all, but most of the time you’ll be looking at a good deal of comma’s and numbers trailing the companies standard number.

Those symbols allow for the phone to delay in sending over the additional numbers, keeping the entire process automated for you. You will however, have to enter in account information in certain places (AT&T requires it to get anyone on the phone), but Direct Line makes sure to drop you off at that point, leaving nothing else but a live person your next step.

I’ve tried this iphone app and I can tell you it works: bringing the customer straight to a human customer service representative is a great buy for $0.99 — money well-spent for sure.

The development of this iphone application really highlights a few important conclusions for the customer:

Make it easy for the customer to speak with a human; the customer needs to speak with a human: if a customer needs help, going through an IVR is the last thing the customer wants to do. An IVR is a navel-gazing tool that helps firms manage demand, resource allocation, and operations, but the trade-off is that the firm is so busy navel-gazing that it fails to look at the needs of the customer.
If a customer is calling customer service, there was already a service failure — do not add insult to injury: in other words, customers do not wake up one day and say “hey, i’m going to call customer service.” Typically, customers call customer service because some failure somewhere happened and they are seeking help. That first failure is “injury” and if the customer has a bad experience in their seeking help from customer service, then that is “insult”: hence “insult to injury” — do not add insult to injury.
The converse of (2) is that, even though there was a first failure somewhere, customer service can act as an effective and strategic response to the customer — it can recover the customer from a bad experience.
At the end of it all, help the customer say to herself “I Rock!” — help the customer feel successful.

When Self-Help Does Not Help is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Customer Service Contacts are Symptoms, not Root Causes: How to Apply the 5 Whys

Pete Abilla — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:08:52 +0000

Most organizations believe that Customer Service contacts are what needs to be fixed or eliminated. On the surface, that might be true. But, when approached as a Lean Thinker, Customer Service contacts are truly only symptoms, the root causes of which are not yet fully known. In what follows, I’ll explain the role of Customer Service in the overall business value chain, and how the business can better meet the needs of the customer through the effective use of the Customer Service function.

To do this, I’ll take a hypothetical iPhone defect case and show how customer service in this example plays a pivotal role in the overall iPhone supply chain — a key player in the overall product value chain.

Strategic Fit of Customer Service in the Supply Chain

In a supply chain network, the Strategic Fit of Customer Service is often the voice-of-the-customer post-release of the service or product. The phrase “start with the customer and work backwards” is really a misnomer. Why? Well, in most products or services, it really starts with the customer and ends with the customer — that is, the customer’s voice is heard at the level of product design and then the voice-of-the-customer is heard at the market monitoring level, post-release of the product or service.

We know — through pretty accurate anecdotal evidence — that the supply chain of the iPhone looks like the following:

From a high-level, we speculate that the following are the material suppliers of the Apple iPhone:

Samsung: The Singapore facility manufactures CPU and Video processing chips.
Infineon: The Singapore facility manufactures Baseband Communications hardware.
Primax Electronics: The Taiwan facility manufactures Digital Camera Modules.
Foxconn International: The Taiwan facility manufactures internal circuitry.
Entery Industrial: The Taiwan facility manufactures connectors.
Cambridge Silicon: The Taiwan facility manufactures bluetooth chipsets.
Umicron Technology: The Taiwan facility manufactures printed circuit boards.
Catcher Technology: The Taiwan facility manufactures stainless metal casings.
Broadcomm: The U.S. based facility builds touch screen controllers.
Marvell: The U.S. based facility builds 802.11 specific parts.
The Apple Shenzhen, China facility assembles the hardware, holds inventory, and handles the pick, pack, and ship steps of the fulfillment process.

If I am correct in any of my research and assertions above, it’s easy to see that if there is any disruption in material flow of any supplier into the Apple Shenzhen, China facility, then production either slows or halts altogether.

We also know that the Austin, Texas Apple Operation is largely where Apple Care physically sits, with another office just outside of Sacramento, California. So, for any contacts into their Call Center, then that is most likely where the contacts will enter (they also have, we understand, outsourcing partners, but Texas Apple Care is the headquarters).

So, more completely, then, the high-level iphone supply chain may represented like this:

Market Monitoring, Defect Data

When a product is released into the market, there can be many channels of market monitoring of the health of the product. In the medical device or pharmaceutical industry, where I once worked, the Market Monitoring phase of the product lifecycle represents a large portion of the product, especially in how it meets regulatory concerns, etc. Marketing and Public Relations also have an especial interest in market monitoring since the voice-of-the-customer post-release can and, usually does, help the firm improve their product or service.

Let us assume the following:

Apple Care (Apple iPhone Customer Service) has a program for collecting product health, post-release, of the product. These can be from inbound contacts to the Apple Customer Service or through blogs or through message boards.
In this program, Apple has a simple and elegant way of making that information actionable, involving collecting data, stratifying of the data, root cause analysis, then practical countermeasures to improve the iPhone through upcoming releases of the product.

iPhone Defect Data

Extending this hypothetical iPhone case, let’s say that Apple Customer Service collects inbound iPhone Defect Data using a very simple check sheet, like the following:

The first column shows very broad defects as reported by the iPhone customers. On the right column are the simple counts. This is called a check sheet. Other variants of this simple quality tool are to collect by day, time, shift, product color, version, etc.

The next step to make this data actionable is to visually render it in a way that points to an healthy area of opprotunity. Below might be a picture that can help us — an iPhone Pareto of Defects:

The above picture is a Pareto Chart, showing the check sheet data, in visual format. As a consumer of this data, the Apple Customer Service folks might want to pay closer attention to the first and second bars of the Pareto, because those two bars represent “iPhone Touch Screen” defects.

The Pareto above naturally leads the consumer of this data to ask “Why?” — “What’s going on with the Apple iPhone Touch Screen?”

The next step, then, in the lifecycle of product monitoring and improvement is to conduct a Root Cause Analysis, focused on areas where the opportunity trade-off is good. In other words, to truly get-to-the-heart of Touch Screen defects, Apple must meet with the suppliers of the iPhone Touch Screen technologies. Based on the Supply Chain network drawn above, Apple should meet with BroadComm, the supplier of the iPhone Touch Screen technologies.

In that meeting, both Apple and the supplier can look over the data, go to the Gemba, and conduct root cause analysis on what’s going on with the Touch Screen.

iPhone Defects Root Cause Analysis

There are several tools that can aid in the process of Root Cause Analysis. Basically, it is a simple approach of asking “why” several times until you arrive at an atomic but actionable item. To visually view the process of the “5-why’s”, a tool called an (Ishikawa Diagram) or a (Cause-and-Effect Diagram) or a (Fishbone Diagram) is often helpful — this tool is referred by either of these names.

Main Components of an Ishikawa Diagram

At the head of the Fishbone is the defect or effect, stated in the form of a question.
The major bones are the capstones, or main groupings of causes.
The minor bones are detailed items under each capstone.
There are common capstones, but they may or may not apply to your specific problem. The common ones are:

People

Equipment

Material

Information

Methods/Procedures

Measurement

Environment

After completing your Fishbone Diagram excercise as a group, it is helpful to test your logic by working the bones: top-down OR bottom-up like:

this happens because of g; g happens because of f; f happens because of e; e happens because of d; d happens because of c; c happens because of b; b happens because of a.

The excercise above is crucially important — you must test your logic so that it makes pragmatic sense and that the atomic root cause is actionable — that is, you can do something to correct it, reduce it, or eliminate the root cause.

Once you or your team arrive at a root cause for a specific capstone, then you typically “cloud” it to identify it as a root cause. A good rule is that there is typically *NOT* 1 root cause for a problem, but potentially several. Below is a diagram of one fishbone, decomposed:

Once the Apple folks and the Apple iPhone Touch Screen supplier arrive at the root causes of the iPhone Touch Screen defects, then the supplier needs to put-in-place countermeasures so that the next shipment of the Touch Screen — perhaps in the next version of the iPhone — won’t have this defect anymore.

In fact, there can be much Public Relations and Marketing campaigns from this effort: Apple can show the public that it has listened the concerns of the market; Apple has done this by fixing the defects that most pains that market, in relation to the iPhone product. There can be much branding from an effort like this.

Conclusion

Customer Service plays a key role in the value chain of a product or service. Some firms view and, consequently behave, as if Customer Service were simply a cost center. These firms miss the point altogether: Customer Service is a major vehicle for hearing and learning about what the market is perceiving and feeling and experiencing from our products or services. This data and information can be made actionable through the strategic and smart utilization of Customer Service.

Disclosure

The data above is only hypothetical. The process above works and, if done strategically and with an eye toward the customer, then Customer Service can be a major player in how our products and services can be improved and how we can shape the signals we send to the market and, consequently, how the market can begin to perceive the firm.

I love Apple, but I don’t own an iPhone. I would love an iPhone and would gladly accept a free iPhone from Apple and/or other free Apple products. Apple can join the other companies that have sent me free stuff here.

+++++

Articles on Ethnography and Design:

Articles on Leadership:

Articles on Queueing Theory:

Articles on Operations, lean and six sigma:

Customer Service Contacts are Symptoms, not Root Causes: How to Apply the 5 Whys is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Reducing Customer Service Contacts

Pete Abilla — Tue, 27 May 2008 06:36:12 +0000

In some organizations, the Customer Service function is largely viewed as a cost center, draining resources of the firm. I maintain that this perspective is what less mature companies support. More mature companies and, subsequently the more successful ones, understand the strategic fit of Customer Service in the overall value chain and it’s functional role in the supply chain.

In what follows, I’ll take a hypothetical iPhone defect case and show how customer service in this example plays a pivotal role in the overall iPhone supply chain — a key player in the overall product value chain.

Strategic Fit of Customer Service in the Supply Chain

We know — through pretty accurate anecdotal evidence — that the supply chain of the iPhone looks like the following:

From a high-level, we speculate that the following are the material suppliers of the Apple iPhone:

Samsung: The Singapore facility manufactures CPU and Video processing chips.
Infineon: The Singapore facility manufactures Baseband Communications hardware.
Primax Electronics: The Taiwan facility manufactures Digital Camera Modules.
Foxconn International: The Taiwan facility manufactures internal circuitry.
Entery Industrial: The Taiwan facility manufactures connectors.
Cambridge Silicon: The Taiwan facility manufactures bluetooth chipsets.
Umicron Technology: The Taiwan facility manufactures printed circuit boards.
Catcher Technology: The Taiwan facility manufactures stainless metal casings.
Broadcomm: The U.S. based facility builds touch screen controllers.
Marvell: The U.S. based facility builds 802.11 specific parts.
The Apple Shenzhen, China facility assembles the hardware, holds inventory, and handles the pick, pack, and ship steps of the fulfillment process.

So, more completely, then, the high-level iphone supply chain may represented like this:

Market Monitoring, Defect Data

Let us assume the following:

Apple Care (Apple iPhone Customer Service) has a program for collecting product health, post-release, of the product. These can be from inbound contacts to the Apple Customer Service or through blogs or through message boards.
In this program, Apple has a simple and elegant way of making that information actionable, involving collecting data, stratifying of the data, root cause analysis, then practical countermeasures to improve the iPhone through upcoming releases of the product.

iPhone Defect Data

Extending this hypothetical iPhone case, let’s say that Apple Customer Service collects inbound iPhone Defect Data using a very simple check sheet, like the following:

The next step to make this data actionable is to visually render it in a way that points to an healthy area of opprotunity. Below might be a picture that can help us — an iPhone Pareto of Defects:

The Pareto above naturally leads the consumer of this data to ask “Why?” — “What’s going on with the Apple iPhone Touch Screen?”

In that meeting, both Apple and the supplier can look over the data, go to the Gemba, and conduct root cause analysis on what’s going on with the Touch Screen.

iPhone Defects Root Cause Analysis

Main Components of an Ishikawa Diagram

At the head of the Fishbone is the defect or effect, stated in the form of a question.
The major bones are the capstones, or main groupings of causes.
The minor bones are detailed items under each capstone.
There are common capstones, but they may or may not apply to your specific problem. The common ones are:

People

Equipment

Material

Information

Methods/Procedures

Measurement

Environment

After completing your Fishbone Diagram excercise as a group, it is helpful to test your logic by working the bones: top-down OR bottom-up like:

this happens because of g; g happens because of f; f happens because of e; e happens because of d; d happens because of c; c happens because of b; b happens because of a.

Conclusion

Disclosure

Reducing Customer Service Contacts is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Customer Service: an iPhone Case Study

Pete Abilla — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:09:59 +0000

In some organizations, the Customer Service function is largely viewed as a cost center, draining resources of the firm. I maintain that this viewpoint is one that less mature companies support. In what follows, I’ll take a hypothetical iPhone defect case and show how customer service in this example plays a pivotal role in the overall iPhone supply chain — a key player in the overall product value chain.

Strategic Fit of Customer Service in the Supply Chain

We know — through pretty accurate anecdotal evidence — that the supply chain of the iPhone looks like the following:

From a high-level, we speculate that the following are the material suppliers of the Apple iPhone:

Samsung: The Singapore facility manufactures CPU and Video processing chips.
Infineon: The Singapore facility manufactures Baseband Communications hardware.
Primax Electronics: The Taiwan facility manufactures Digital Camera Modules.
Foxconn International: The Taiwan facility manufactures internal circuitry.
Entery Industrial: The Taiwan facility manufactures connectors.
Cambridge Silicon: The Taiwan facility manufactures bluetooth chipsets.
Umicron Technology: The Taiwan facility manufactures printed circuit boards.
Catcher Technology: The Taiwan facility manufactures stainless metal casings.
Broadcomm: The U.S. based facility builds touch screen controllers.
Marvell: The U.S. based facility builds 802.11 specific parts.
The Apple Shenzhen, China facility assembles the hardware, holds inventory, and handles the pick, pack, and ship steps of the fulfillment process.

So, more completely, then, the high-level iphone supply chain may represented like this:

Market Monitoring, Defect Data

Let us assume the following:

Apple Care (Apple iPhone Customer Service) has a program for collecting product health, post-release, of the product. These can be from inbound contacts to the Apple Customer Service or through blogs or through message boards.
In this program, Apple has a simple and elegant way of making that information actionable, involving collecting data, stratifying of the data, root cause analysis, then practical countermeasures to improve the iPhone through upcoming releases of the product.

iPhone Defect Data

Extending this hypothetical iPhone case, let’s say that Apple Customer Service collects inbound iPhone Defect Data using a very simple check sheet, like the following:

The next step to make this data actionable is to visually render it in a way that points to an healthy area of opprotunity. Below might be a picture that can help us — an iPhone Pareto of Defects:

The Pareto above naturally leads the consumer of this data to ask “Why?” — “What’s going on with the Apple iPhone Touch Screen?”

In that meeting, both Apple and the supplier can look over the data, go to the Gemba, and conduct root cause analysis on what’s going on with the Touch Screen.

iPhone Defects Root Cause Analysis

Main Components of an Ishikawa Diagram

At the head of the Fishbone is the defect or effect, stated in the form of a question.
The major bones are the capstones, or main groupings of causes.
The minor bones are detailed items under each capstone.
There are common capstones, but they may or may not apply to your specific problem. The common ones are:

People

Equipment

Material

Information

Methods/Procedures

Measurement

Environment

After completing your Fishbone Diagram excercise as a group, it is helpful to test your logic by working the bones: top-down OR bottom-up like:

this happens because of g; g happens because of f; f happens because of e; e happens because of d; d happens because of c; c happens because of b; b happens because of a.

Conclusion

Disclosure

Customer Service: an iPhone Case Study is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

The Basics Perfect or Engendering Loyalty? or Both?

Pete Abilla — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:55:03 +0000

Bijan shared this great, real-world experience of how getting the basics perfect is, in fact, a loyalty driver: his experience? — with Amazon.com Customer Service.

In his words,

Two weeks ago I bought an item on Amazon. It was a toaster oven.

In my haste I shipped it to my brother instead of my home address.

Even worse, it was my brother’s old address so the product was shipped to the wrong house and I don’t know the owner. Even worse, that new owner signed and accepted the shipment.

I called Amazon and told them the whole story. The customer service rep put me on hold for 2 minutes. Then he came back on and told me that they would like to send me the item to my home address w/out an additional charge. I said thanks very much. Two minutes later I received a confirmation email.

Amazing customer service.

Amazon rules.

Then, In the comments section, a reader asked:

They improved, they were not like this before. I remember when you could not call them and email response took days.

And, Bijan, responded — no — he defended, Amazon.com Customer Service:

Actually calling them by phone was very easy. They use click-to-call so I just punched in my phone number, the service calls me immediately and then I’m connected to customer service.

Bijan’s experience with Amazon.com Customer Service was an act of the simple basics, in my opinion. But, it is a clear example of how getting the basics right can lead to loyalty, as evidenced in Bijan’s praise for Amazon and also in his later defense of Amazon.com Customer Service in the comment section of his blog.

The Amazon.com Core Values

The Amazon Core Values are realized in the way they treat the customer — also, they are hard-core in every Amazonian. Specifically, the Amazon Core Values are:

Customer Obsession: We start with the customer and work backwards.
Innovation: If you don’t listen to your customers you will fail. But if you only listen to your customers you will also fail.
Bias for Action: We live in a time of unheralded revolution and insurmountable opportunity – provided we make every minute count.
Ownership: Ownership matters when you’re building a great company. Owners think long-term, plead passionately for their projects and ideas, and are empowered to respectfully challenge decisions.
High Hiring Bar: When making a hiring decision we ask ourselves: “Will I admire this person? Will I learn from this person? Is this person a superstar?”
Frugality: We spend money on things that really matter and believe that frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention!

Indeed, Customer Obsession — we see it and hear about it, over and over again. It’s true: getting the basics perfect can lead to customer loyalty.

disclosure: I was previously employed by Amazon.com and am still a shareholder in the company. To this day, I remain a fanboy of Amazon but also know about its warts and issues.

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Comment on Qwest Customer Service

Pete Abilla — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 18:39:34 +0000

My internet connection broke this weekend. I called customer service and was connected to a customer service representative in the Philippines. He was very nice, cordial, and really wanted to help. But, a few things were broken in the communication:

It is fine to source offshore services to places like the Philippines, India, and elsewhere. But, please learn how to speak English. I tried to speak proper, non-slang English to help the customer service representative, but the customer services representative still had a difficult time understanding.
Learn to read the call notes. Doing this will help the customer feel like they are listened to and that there’s context in the conversation. Otherwise, the customer will feel frustrated, having to re-explain the wheel.
Memorize Office or Service Hours. The customer service representative scheduled a service technician to visit us during hours when the dispatch was closed. Not good, but nice effort.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad service and now our internet connection is fine. Doing the above items will help to put your offshore strategy on the right track: Learn English, Memorize office hours, and Read call notes. That’s a good start.

Comment on Qwest Customer Service is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Targus – Excellent Customer Service

Pete Abilla — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:49:36 +0000

I bought a Targus TR601 15 Elite Notebook Backpack about 1 year ago. Right before Christmas, the zipper on it broke. I called Targus customer service and had a very good customer experience. The Customer Service Representative did several things that were right:

Make it Personal

The Customer Service Representative called me by name and treated me very well. He asked about my zipper breaking and empathized with me.

Honor my Request; Honor the Warranty

I called to request for a new backpack. The Customer Service Representative took down my email and other basic information. He guided me through the streamlined process. That was it. It was very easy and there was no hassle.

Where’s my Stuff

After sending in my defected backpack, I received an email from Targus one week later indicating that they received my backpack and that they are processing my request. Great service. Below is their email:

Subject
Targus \| RMA #060828-000190

Discussion Thread
Response (Zee)	11/17/2006 10:36 AM
Hello:Your product under warranty has been received and is in process. Thank you for your patience.
Response (Ryan)	08/28/2006 12:23 PM
Dear Peter,Thank you for contacting Targus Customer support. Below is the information on returning your product for warranty. Please include a copy of this e-mail with your return. The Reference Number as it appears on this message is your tracking number. Ship your product to: Targus, Inc. Warranty Dept 1211 N. Miller Street Anaheim, CA 92806

One week after receiving the email above, I received my brand new backpack.

This was a very good customer service experience. I am impressed and will buy more Targus products in the future. Nice work.

Targus – Excellent Customer Service is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting