Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Customer Service

An opportunity
September 6, 2022

An opportunity

Yesterday brought home to me just how ageist our banks have become.

My husband helps to run a small non-profit organisation.  Just over a year ago, they were told their account wasn’t active enough and would be closed.

13 months later they are still trying to open a replacement.

Doing anything face-to-face is out of the question – the banks simply won’t countenance that.  Everything has to be done as a combination of phone calls with a bank contact and online.

First of all, the bank contacts are obviously overloaded.  It took months to speak to anyone, and months for them to get back with a decision.

But the online part is the pits.

Because the non-profit does things properly, several signatories are involved.   And as with many small, local non-profits, all of them are over 60, some well over 60 – because that’s how they have the time to devote to these causes.

They don’t all have mobile phones, and if they do, they don’t carry them around all the time.  So a simple thing like 2-factor identification becomes a real difficulty.

Then, when they get things wrong, the error messages coming back are unhelpful, for example being told you have entered the wrong email address via an an email sent to that address (!!).  So they get worried about getting things wrong, and do what seems sensible.  They write things down, take things slowly.

But their fingers aren’t as fast as they used to be, so they get logged out of screens before they’ve had time to type things in.

And so they get frustrated, and have to spend more time getting together to try and sort things out.

These are intelligent, kind, generous people who are just trying to help their community.   All they are looking for is somewhere safe to keep the money people have trusted them with; somewhere that will give them an audit trail for the few transactions they need to carry out.

Tough.   Because banks have clearly decided that people don’t matter.  And what could have taken a day to set up in-branch has taken 13 months – so far.

There’s a massive opportunity here for someone prepared to offer a no-frills, human service.  Perhaps not for long, since the baby-boomer bump will be over in a decade or so, but for long enough to do decent business.

I wonder if anyone will take it.

Why try to be a unicorn when you can be a zebra?
July 27, 2022

Why try to be a unicorn when you can be a zebra?

Last week, someone sent me a link to this article from Harvard Business Review:

“Lessons from Germany’s mid-sized giants”

If you’re interested in what makes small businesses successful, it’s well worth a read.

Ignore the points made at the end – that’s just wishful thinking on the part of management consultants.  These companies don’t need outside interference, or to look more like their Anglo-Saxon counterparts.   They’ve been working well this way for decades and are likely to continue.

For me, it’s an encouraging article, that shows that given the right environment it is possible to be a global business and operate humanely at home and abroad.

Why try to be a unicorn when you can be a zebra?

I’d like to think there are many such businesses hidden away here in the UK too.   I’m unlikely to find out of course, because if there are, they won’t be looking at social media.

 

‘Sorry’ is never enough
July 14, 2022

‘Sorry’ is never enough

Corporations, being founded on a theory of Homo Economicus, naturally believe that when someone complains, they are merely seeking personal redress.

That’s true, but it isn’t the whole story.

Most often people want recognition of their own case AND to make sure it doesn’t happen to someone else.   Sometimes people just want to make sure the mistake isn’t repeated.

That means “Sorry” is never enough, even when accompanied by compensation.   What people really want to see is evidence that the mistake is being rectified.  That systems and process are changed to ensure it can’t be repeated.

Otherwise, the only conclusion to be drawn is that it wasn’t a mistake, but policy.   And compensation a bribe to keep your mouth shut.

 

Check out this Twitter thread from George Monbiot to see what I mean.

And this thread for the complaint that started it.

Almost impossible
March 30, 2022

Almost impossible

I loved Seth Godin’s blog post yesterday.

In it he talks about the gap in customer service between one person in your team and another – or even between the same person on a good day and a bad day – and how you might address it.

One approach is to nail everything down so much that delivery of the experience is exactly the same, no matter who is giving it.   Another is to leave it to a great person doing the job, giving them “room to shine. With all the variability that entails.”

“It’s almost impossible to have both.”

Almost, but not impossible.

Hire great people, give them a Promise of Value and a Customer Experience Score, that creates a floor, but no ceiling, then set them free to interpret it in their own way.

Variations on a theme.   The best of both worlds.

Blame
February 15, 2022

Blame

What should you do when an important piece of data about a customer has been ‘lost’?

You tell them its their fault of course.

You send them a letter threatening them with loss of the service unless they rectify the mistake.

And since you’ve lost the same piece of data for thousands of customers, you make sure there are no extra people to answer the phone number you’ve given them.

I wonder how many customers they’ll lose as a result?

I know I’m cynical, but could ditching clients actually be the point?

It seems a pretty good way to go about it.

Early learning
January 31, 2022

Early learning

In the olden days, there was only one button you could use to request the bus driver to stop, and in the outskirts of Newcastle, where I grew up, only one person could press it – the bus conductor.

No exceptions.

There were other rules too.   There was a special school bus, which only allowed children on board.   And where there was a school bus, children weren’t allowed on the normal (rush-hour) buses.

No exceptions.

Until my first day at primary school.

My mum wanted to take me on my first day.   It was a fair way to go, so she thought we’d get the bus.

But I wasn’t allowed on the ordinary bus.  She wasn’t allowed on the school bus.

No exceptions.

My mum argued:

“It’s her first day, I want to take her myself.“

No exceptions.

“It’s just for the first day”

No exceptions.

“Surely you’ve had this happen before?”

No exceptions

It wasn’t just stubbornness on her part.  She realised that it wasn’t just her, it was every mum that missed out.*

She staged a 1-mum sit in until she got her way.

In theory, having separate buses during rush-hour was a great idea.   But the people who designed it hadn’t thought of the human aspect – that most mums would want to accompany their child to their first day at school.  If they had thought of it, it could have been easily accommodated, with an extra bus on the first day of a new school year, and exceptions allowed in between.

Instead they made the whole experience stressful for everyone.

I don’t know if my mum changed anything permanently, but at least she tried.

We were late for school, but I learned something useful that morning.

If you think something is wrong, don’t just put up with it, do something.

 

*I should mention that my mum had form. At her school, she’d successfully negotiated a permanent change of uniform for 16 – 18 year old girls – away from St Trinan-style gymslips to a more comfortable and becoming blouse and skirt ensemble.

Not worth a candle
December 14, 2021

Not worth a candle

As usual ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ will be on TV this Christmas.  I’ll be watching it, again.

And noting, again, that nothing that makes the protagonist’s life worth living has anything to do with scented candles, Amazon orders, or objects of any kind.

Of course not.  We are not what we own, but who we know.   We are the sum and product of our connections with others.

Which makes me even angrier that more than a dozen people died last weekend in Kentucky because a manufacturing or fulfillment target counted for more.

This isn’t ‘legendary customer service’ – I don’t believe any customer would value on-time delivery of their order over the life of the person making or packing it.

In fact it shows that the customer isn’t really important either.  It would have been so easy to let people know ‘We’re sorry, but a storm is on it’s way, and we daren’t risk our people’s lives.  We’ll make arrangements to get your goods to you another way, but they may be later than you expected’.

As you know, I believe a business should be built around making and keeping promises to its customers and clients, but when you can’t, or shouldn’t, due to forces outside your control, say so and do the right thing.  The people you serve will love you more for it, not less.

Saying it better than I can
December 2, 2021

Saying it better than I can

This post from Seth is so good, I have to give it to you in full:

“Customer service is free

Most large organizations would disagree.

They hire cheap labor to answer the phone. They install recordings to mollify people who are on hold for hours. They measure the cost of the call center and put loopholes in the warranty.

When you see customer service as a cost center, all of these steps make sense. Any money spent lowering costs seems to raise profits.

But customer service is actually a profit center, for four reasons:

First, because the customer who calls you or shows up at the adjustments window is fully enrolled. Unlike just about every other moment you’ve had with them, in this moment, they are paying attention, leaning into the situation and on high alert. Everything you do here, unlike just about every other marketing interaction you have, will go on your permanent record.

Second, because your competitors have foolishly decided to treat this interaction as a cost, the chances that you can dramatically overdeliver are pretty good. You can’t make a car that’s ten times better, but you can easily produce customer service for your car customers that’s ten times better than what most manufacturers deliver.

And third, because in our industrialized economy, people love to tell stories about service. And so the word spreads (or doesn’t) based on what you’re about to do.

Finally, it’s been demonstrated again and again that the most valuable customers are the loyal ones. While your promotional team is out there making noise to get you new customers, you’d be much better off turning your existing customers into repeat customers and ambassadors.

And so, the money you spend on customer service isn’t simply free. It actually repays you many times over.”

Customer service is an opportunity to play a different game, an infinite game of connection.

The irony is that when it’s genuine, it leads to more profit, not less.

 

PS it’s not so different when governments spend money on people at the bottom of the pile instead of the top.   They get more back than they spend.  And their people flourish.

Our greatest tool
October 25, 2021

Our greatest tool

Following nicely on from the last post, I recommend this series of posts from my friend Mary Jane Copps – The Phone Lady.

You’re probably familiar with the idea that as humans we are wired to look for stories, which means that telling them is a great form of marketing.

What Mary Jane makes us realise is that before you can tell your own story effectively, you have to first find the story of the person you are talking to.  Not the story of the avatar you’ve created to ‘represent’ them, but the actual story of the actual person you are speaking to right now.

Why?

Because “It’s within their story that your value takes root.“

That means that whatever your process for communicating one-to-one with prospects or clients is,  it must have room for curiosity, and enough flex to accommodate the learning you gain by exercising that curiosity.

Cheating on your best clients
October 7, 2021

Cheating on your best clients

Turning clients into fans, champions and advocates of your business is brilliant.    And not without ongoing cost.   If you want to keep them as fans, you have to pay more attention to them than you might think.

For example if your loyal clients have been among the first to buy your ‘one-off, limited edition, short-run, never-to-be-repeated’ thing, don’t give them a free copy in the goody-bag at the next live event they attend.   And certainly don’t repeat that mistake at the next one.

As you know, I’m a big fan of consistency, but consistency doesn’t have to mean treating everyone the same.  If you have the data – who bought the thing, who’s attending previous events, who’s attending this one, it doesn’t take much effort to find the intersections and tailor your goody-bags accordingly.  In fact, giving everyone a named goody-bag only makes things better.

Another example.   It’s good to repackage and repurpose content to reach a slightly different segment of your community.   Perhaps not so good to sell it to everyone, including those who’ve seen it before.  Removing them from your mailout is not hard.   Creating an experience that rhymes and reinforces is an even better solution.

Loving your loyal clients back has to be genuine, or the illusion perfectly maintained.

Otherwise, your best fans will feel cheated.   And that doesn’t end well for the cheater.