Busted Dishwasher. Great Service

So we chose to work with Yale Appliance + Lighting, a company that we had used in the past. And it worked out great. We spent a bit more, but the fantastic service was worth every penny we paid above the DIY options.

The excellent customer service actually began with the sales department. Unlike our experience with the salespeople at other appliance outlets who seemed to be interested primarily in a commission, Yale Appliance + Lighting didn't pitch particular models or push to close a sale. Customers have a choice of how to interact—you can phone them, use chat, or communicate via email. Yukari chose to speak with the representative on the telephone, and after quickly learning about the various models and their availability she made her choice.

While this experience might appear to be very similar to services offered by other companies, it was the postsale customer support that was amazing. We instantly received the receipt and extended warranty via email and were assured that this information is always stored in the company's systems, so we needn't worry about saving the paperwork.

We were offered several delivery dates to choose from. Unlike many other service people who force customers into a rigid schedule, Yale Appliance + Lighting let us be in charge. Once the date and time were agreed, we received a helpful email that included this:

Thank you for your recent purchase from Yale Appliance + Lighting. We wanted to send you some important information about your upcoming delivery. The information in the video below is vital to ensure a safe, successful delivery without any complications.

Yale Appliance + Lighting has been family owned for over 80 years thanks to our loyal customers. Thank you for taking the time to watch this, and please contact me by email or by phone if you have any questions.

The video provided information about how to prepare our home for the delivery, including measuring to make sure the new unit would fit in the door. It detailed things that can go wrong and provided advice on what to watch out for.

Then, the day before the delivery, we received a phone call reminding us of the agreed time the next morning.

It was the morning of the delivery when the real-time customer service aspects of Yale Appliance + Lighting caused us to say, “Wow!” Yukari received a telephone call about 7:30 a.m. from the delivery/installation person, who was phoning from his truck to say that he might be late due to an unexpected traffic delay. He gave Yukari the highway exit number where he was at that moment, and they chatted about the traffic situation. A quick look at the traffic display on Google Maps showed that indeed there was a problem at the location the driver was calling from. He confirmed that ours was the first delivery of the day and that he would call again when he was nearing our home, which he did when he was five minutes away.

Once the crew arrived a short time later, Yukari knew what to expect. They were almost like old friends. Rather than frustration at being late, the vibe was relaxed and open. Soon our new dishwasher was installed, and in the months since we've been very happy with the model we chose.

What's so remarkable about this customer service experience is that it is so simple, yet so unexpected. Many companies give you a time window in which the service call will take place, but frequently they don't keep to their schedule, making customers wait hours. Certainly it's rare that a company lets you know the exact status of what's happening on the road. It's a wonder that so few organizations practice excellent customer support like Yale Appliance + Lighting. A quick peek at the Yelp consumer review site shows that many dozens of other customers are just as happy with its service as we have been. That's why people keep coming back.

What Is Customer Service Anyway?

Sadly, unlike Yale Appliance + Lighting, most organizations have reactive customer service. They set up a toll-free telephone number, and when customers call they inevitably hear a recording saying, “Your call is important to us,” and must wait a few minutes (or more) until a poorly trained representative reads off a script. Within an organization, customer service is usually an afterthought. Worse, it's not uncommon that customer service is considered a cost center, and executives are rewarded for reducing expenses instead of keeping customers happy. When executives are rewarded for controlling the costs of this one department, they miss seeing the larger picture by failing to understand that great service drives sales.

It certainly doesn't have to be this way. Great customer service actually helps increase sales because people will return again and again and spend more money. There is no doubt that when we next need an appliance, we will once again be contacting Yale Appliance + Lighting. And happy customers talk about their experience to their friends and share on social networks and review sites. In fact, studies show that an investment in customer service generates more revenue than an investment in sales because happier customers spend more money. It's far easier to keep your existing customers than it is to search for new ones.

The Elements of Customer Service

Let's take a quick look at the basics before we dive into specific examples later in this chapter.

Customer support is the art and science of keeping customers happy by communicating with them about the company's products and services. Good customer support is often proactive, such as Yale Appliance + Lighting's decision to send a video outlining what we should expect when our dishwasher was delivered and installed. And customer support also has reactive elements, including handling customer inquiries by telephone, email, social media, or in person.

Handling complaints is an essential part of customer service. When customers aren't happy, fixing the problem should be seen as an opportunity to turn people from being unhappy to being delighted.

Professional services are those additional elements provided by a company (or its partners) that help customers to install, learn about, or use a product. Frequently associated with large enterprise software installations, professional services ensure that a customer has the product up and running quickly. In the example of our experience with Yale Appliance + Lighting, the dishwasher itself was the base sale, and the delivery and installation were the professional services element of our purchase.

Customer Service and Corporate Culture

The best organizations infuse great customer service into their corporate culture. Customer service isn't a department; it's a state of mind. It's a corporate culture founded on doing the right thing.

It comes from all employees understanding the corporate story, the defining characteristic of the company, which is developed at the top of the organization. That's what we looked at in Chapter 3 of the book.

Organizations that hire good people and treat those employees well have the raw materials to build a culture. Without employees who care, great service won't happen.

When Yukari spoke with the representative at Yale Appliance + Lighting, she felt the person cared about serving us. The rep wasn't just hustling a commission, but trying to solve our problems. Customer service is an embodiment of corporate culture.

Do you care? Or not? The obvious difference here is the human touch. While automation can certainly help to make a customer service team more efficient, automation should be implemented only when it serves the human element. Technology shouldn't be used to completely replace people who are empowered to help customers.

Content Creation

In the new world of web and mobile content delivery, the best organizations communicate with customers in any way they prefer—by email, telephone, text message, face-to-face, or via social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn.

Because the new tools of the web allow the easy provision of content, creating information—videos, images, text-based documents, graphics, and the like—and sending it to customers as they are learning about your product or service, these tools provide a highly effective new form of service. When Yale Appliance + Lighting sent us the video, we could watch it on our own time.

The accessibility of just the right content at the right time will delight customers and set the tone of the relationship. Costa Rica Expeditions, a Central American ecotourism company, sends customers who have booked a trip a link to 27 Things to Do before Leaving Home, which provides very specific items that will make customers' impending trip more enjoyable. The list, which includes things like “photocopy your passport; put the phone number of your airline in your cell phone's speed dial; and pay all bills that will be due while you're away,” covers things many people don't consider. And it's simple for Costa Rica Expeditions' customer services staff to email the link to the information a few weeks before each customer's journey begins.

Great Customer Service Drives Sales

Throughout the year that I had been researching and writing the first edition of this book, I had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds of people who are involved in serving customers. I was stunned by the number of them who revealed to me that they had turned their customer service function into a “secret weapon” of revenue growth. People shared the secret that when customers are happy, they keep their product longer, they spend more over time, and they share their happiness with others either in person or on social networks. It seems so simple! Yet few companies actually use this secret weapon of business growth.

Several people shared actual metrics, and I learned that investing money in customer service efforts resulted in more revenue and profit than investing the same amount of money in sales efforts. Yet the vast majority of companies, when looking to increase revenue, invest in hiring more salespeople.

Getting Sales and Service into Alignment

Here's something curious: Many companies have completely different cultures and procedures for their customers depending upon which department is interacting with them. The manner in which salespeople engage potential new customers when trying to win new business is often light-years removed from how these same customers are serviced by the same company only months later. It's no surprise that in the course of my research I learned that this strategy doesn't produce good results. Focusing a great deal of attention on buyers during the buying process and then relegating those same buyers to poor postsale service means customers are far more likely to leave. This can lead to a churn cycle in which companies add more sales resources to replace the customers who abandoned them, and around and around it goes.

You keep customers happy by doing exactly the same things that won them in the first place. You win customers by focusing on their needs. You keep them the same way.

In this chapter we'll look at all these aspects of customer service. In the following chapter we'll focus on the concept of agile, real-time social service.

Poor Customer Service Is the Norm

Unlike my first-rate experience with Yale Appliance + Lighting, good customer service is difficult to find. And poor customer service inevitably means that the salespeople end up working even harder. In contrast, great customer service not only results in more repeat customers, but those delighted customers talking about you become your unpaid covert sales force.

I'll be sharing other great examples of customer service like the one I experienced at Yale Appliance + Lighting. But first, a few examples of what, sadly, seems to be more typical of how companies treat me. I'm sure you can produce your own examples of poor service.

I travel a great deal, nearly 100 hotel room nights per year. Like most people who travel this often, I've got a deck of airline frequent-flier and hotel frequent-guest cards that I whip out whenever I check in for a flight or hotel stay.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email pitch from Hilton Hotels for an American Express Platinum card that basically threatened to cancel my Hilton HHonors membership if I didn't sign up for the offer. While this happened several years ago, it still makes me wonder how an organization can be so clueless.

Sure, the email signed by Mary E. Parks, Vice President, Marketing, Hilton HHonors Worldwide, said: “You are very important to us.” But the tone and content of the email screamed the opposite.

This “offer” was so outrageous, I checked to see if it was a phishing attempt. No, it turned out it was a legitimate email from Hilton.

Subject line: Don't let your HHonors membership lapse.

As a member of Hilton HHonors, you are very important to us. That's why we want to give you an opportunity to reactivate your HHonors account before it is closed and the HHonors points you've already earned are forfeited. Plus, you can earn an additional 10,000 HHonors bonus points—enough for a free night.

Apply for the no annual fee Hilton HHonors Platinum Credit Card from American Express® and earn 10,000 HHonors bonus points on your first purchase after you're approved. By using the Card, you will reactivate your HHonors account and build upon your current point balance.

The email goes on to tout the Hilton HHonors Platinum Credit Card from American Express. While the email details other ways to keep my HHonors account open beyond the cutoff, such as staying at a participating Hilton Hotel property, I read the email as basically a threat: Open a credit card account or your frequent traveler account will be terminated. The email concluded with:

If you do not take one of the actions above by [date], your HHonors account will be closed and all accumulated points will be forfeited. Prior to your account closing, you may redeem your HHonors points for any eligible reward. After the points are redeemed, your account will be closed by the date above and all remaining points will be forfeited.

This is simply not a good way to treat a customer who has stayed scores of nights in Hiltons over the years. So what could the people at Hilton have done instead?

Using rich data, they could have mined their database and learned that the last time I stayed at a Hilton property I paid with an American Express Platinum card. They could have then concluded that I don't need another one!

If I am very important to them, they could have sent me an email saying, “You didn't stay in a Hilton property for the past nine months, so we're extending your qualification period because we want you to come back.” Why threaten a customer? Do they think I'm going to stay at a Hilton now because I'm so eager to keep my status?

But most importantly, why allow their loyalty card to expire at all? What's the point of revoking it?

Teaching Customers to Wait for a Sale

Indulge me just one more example of poor customer service related to travel. When I needed to travel to Toronto to speak at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, I chose to fly Porter Airlines from Boston. The Porter Airlines flight and service were excellent. I particularly loved flying into Toronto City Airport, which is located on an island situated in downtown. The travel time from the airport into the city is significantly less than from the main international airport located outside Toronto. The travel experience itself was top-notch. In contrast, Porter Airlines' email communications were poor.

After I booked my flights, I signed up for the Porter Airlines email list. I expected to be educated about Porter and the destinations the airline services. I was not. Instead, on a regular basis, all they've sent me are fare sales. I've gotten dozens of email offers since I've been on the email list, including “Summer Splash Sale; Crisp fall air and big Porter savings; Save big on your holiday travel!” and “Biggest sale ever—with our lowest fares on select flights!”

Here's the important point: I received my first email offer shortly after booking my flights, and I realized that had I waited, I could have gotten a much cheaper fare. It annoyed me that I paid a lot more for my flights than I should have. But I couldn't switch, because the fare sale emails said new bookings only.

I get what they are doing. They want to fill seats, and it's a lazy person's drug to run sales on a regular basis.

But offering frequent fare sales also trains customers to wait for a better price on Porter Airlines. It also annoys customers like me who (stupidly) paid too much.

Porter Airlines is providing good flight service. In fact, it was named Best Small Airline in the World in the 2013 Condé Nast Readers' Choice Awards. But imagine how much better it would be if its email customer service communications were equally good.

I keep waiting to see emails from Porter Airlines talking about the other destinations it serves. Why not tell me about, say, Halifax? Maybe I'd like to go there, but I don't know much about it. Or maybe Porter could provide ideas about why I should return to Toronto with my family. Or it could introduce its people: “This is Captain Smith.” But the airline doesn't do anything like this. It's all about the fare sale.

Your email program should be used to build a long-term relationship with your customers. You should educate and entertain them. I'll fly Porter Airlines again. But next time I'll only book a fare that is on sale. In what seems to be a boneheaded move, Porter Airlines doesn't use its customer email list to educate and inform; rather, it is simply a tool to pitch the latest sale prices.

A Clear Picture of How Great Service Generates Additional Leads

When you provide superior service, people talk about you online, and that drives new business. Doug Weil runs Clearly Resolved, a company that provides video calibration services throughout the Midwest. Video calibration is the art and science of adjusting high-end video displays—such as those used in home theaters, media rooms, and professional production suites—so that the on-screen image matches original source content when the director signed off on the film-to-video transfer or as it appeared on the director's monitor during a live broadcast. When properly calibrated, the video image looks just like one in a movie theater or ballpark or concert stage. When the calibration is off, the colors can be out of whack, sometimes dramatically, because factory settings are optimized for showroom floors and are typically much too harsh. A proper professional calibration requires expertise, equipment, and several hours. Since starting his business in 2002, Weil has calibrated nearly 2,000 systems.

“Diehard film buffs are probably the most enthusiastic consumers of video calibration services, because they often have invested considerable time, money, and effort into putting together a system that will match (or exceed) the downtown movie house experience,” Weil says. “Most of my customers initially become aware of video calibration either through a Best Buy shopping experience or via one of the dozens of online home theater or consumer electronics websites and discussion boards, such as Engadget, Gizmodo, CNET, or the biggest of its type, the AVSForum.”

Many people who are introduced to the concept of video calibration from a retailer or other home theater site eventually use a web search engine to learn more. And when doing such a search, they frequently find AVSForum. “AVS is where 90 percent of the customer reviews about my service appear,” Weil says. “Due to the volume and density of the AVS site, it's impossible for me to know about every review written about my service, but I routinely hear from new prospects and customers that they found me through reading positive customer reviews. I think about 25 percent of all my new business comes via either a review or a customer referral.”

After Weil finishes a job, he sends each client a Calibration Report a day or two later. “I don't aggressively seek reviews from customers and I never suggest it before or during the calibration process,” he says. “I do mention that I appreciate reviews in the cover note of the Calibration Report. And in that note I provide links and suggestions about where they might post them. But I make it clear I have no expectation that they will take the time to write one.”

Providing excellent service also prompts favorable word of mouth from happy customers. “The only thing better than an online review for generating new business is a client referral,” Weil says. “Referrals are typically the friends, work colleagues, or family members of happy customers, and they're superior to online reviews primarily because it typically indicates that the new customer has actually seen a calibrated display and knows what to expect. That reduces the selling process and also means it's not necessary to spend a lot of time framing expectations.”

Happy customers. Positive reviews. Good word of mouth. New business. It seems so simple. Provide excellent service and people will talk you up. And when they do, you make more sales.

A Nonprofit Changes the Rules of Charitable Reporting While Also Changing the World

All organizations must start with an authentic and compelling story and communicate that to customers. This strategy is essential for companies, educational institutions, individuals, and, yes, nonprofits too.

“We fundamentally believe that helping people see their impact is the most important thing that we do,” says Paull Young, director of digital at charity: water, a start-up nonprofit whose mission is to provide clean and safe drinking water to every person on the planet. The company is reinventing how charity works, focusing on a 100 percent model in which every penny donated is sent to local partner organizations to directly fund water projects. And the 100 percent model is communicated to donors with actual proof. Every water project that charity: water builds is reported online with a GPS location and photos. As of early 2016, charity: water had raised well over $100 million and had funded 16,000 water projects. And every one of them is photographed and marked with GPS so people can see the results of the funds they've donated.

Like any very successful organization, charity: water has a compelling story: serving more than 5.2 million people by providing clean drinking water to remote villages in 24 different countries, and promising donors that 100 percent of their contribution will go directly toward funding water projects. Charity: water has around 100 super-supporters primarily from the technology start-up world, including Jack Dorsey, co-founder and co-creator of Twitter, and Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster and the first president of Facebook. The backing from charity: water's super-supporters funds the organization's administrative expenses such as employee salaries and office costs, allowing every contribution raised to go toward serving the mission to providing clean water. “If you go to our website and donate $20, every cent of your $20 goes to a local partner,” Young says. “We even pay back the credit card fee. We think about how our business can compress time and compress distance by bringing our donors and fundraisers close to our local partner organizations and the recipients of the work in the field.”

From its origin in 2006, charity: water has engaged in interesting ways to serve its contributors by delivering content about how their money is being utilized to bring people water. Even with a small donation, customers can go to the charity: water site to see precisely where that money was spent. For example, a recent campaign brought 100 villages in India clean water. Each community was given a village water tower, and in every household three individual water taps were installed—one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, and one to the shower—which provide water piped from the community supply.

Such customer service is unusual in the nonprofit world. Most charities do little reporting indicating of how specific donations are used, or they send a few generic photos. Charity: water is different because every dollar is earmarked for a particular project, and information about that project is reported back to those who funded it. While charity: water is a nonprofit, similar customer service strategies can work for all sorts of organizations.

“From day one it's been about photos, GPS, and Google Maps to see all of the water points,” Young says. “You can search for someone's name and see the project they funded, right down to the very village that will be served. Donors get as close as possible to really feeling like they're giving directly to individual people. And the more that we can do that, and the more that donors feel as if they are part of our projects, we believe people will stick with us and the more they'll care about our issue.”

As an example, thousands of donors in the September 2011 campaign funded Yellow Thunder, the first charity: water drilling rig located in Tigray, Ethiopia. Yellow Thunder was funded so the organization's local partners in Ethiopia could drill more wells. A Twitter feed at @cwyellowthunder and a project page on the charity: water site allow people who supported the project to follow its progress and track it on a map to see evidence of the project in action. As I write this, Yellow Thunder is over 1,500 days in the field, helping to bring clean drinking water to more than 40,000 people a year in northern Ethiopia.

In a world where it is not unusual for charities to take people's money and plow a significant portion of these contributions into funding salaries, office space, and advertising, charity: water uses a customer service model that shows donors exactly where and how their money was utilized to help people. “Our belief in showing people how their money is spent provides an amazing customer experience,” Young says. “By giving this detailed reporting, not only do we prove the impact people have made, but we can build a deeper relationship with donors, which in turn will not only bond them more closely to charity: water, but will make them care about the water issue. If they choose to give their hard-earned money, or even more so, to give their time and energy to fundraising, we owe them not only proof of where their money goes, but also to give them a great experience with the brand.”

This same approach to customer service works for any organization. When you have a compelling story to tell and you tell it well, your customers will be eager to do business with you.

Charity: water's focused delivery of meaningful content to its donors strengthens customer support for the organization while additionally stimulating further donations.

Now let's turn to how an organization can handle complaints and transform an unhappy customer into one who publicly sings its praises.

“I Hope Everyone Who Works for Your Company Burns in Hell”

Imagine seeing this on Twitter referencing your company:

@aimee_ogara: @Epson_Store The printer I'm trying to set up is the most retarded process ever I hope everyone who works for your company burns in hell

Whoa. Now that is an unhappy customer! And the fury is being displayed via Twitter for anyone to see. It is this kind of customer complaint that Ron Ploof, manager of social media at Epson America, Inc., searches out and helps to solve. Epson America is the local sales, service, and support company of Seiko Epson Corporation in Japan. It's a large company with businesses that include printers and projectors, augmented reality glasses, robotics, and chips. Ploof works throughout the organization to make sure that social channels are used effectively.

When somebody is so frustrated that they want to vent in social media, they are surprised when someone from the company actually responds. Most people expect that no one will bother to read their tweets, posts, and updates in social networks like Facebook.

@Epson_Store: @aimee_ogara Before I put on my fire resistant clothing, is there anything I can do to help?

@aimee_ogara: @Epson_Store Haha I guess I'll forgive you just because this tweet made me laugh…and I got it set up so I'm good now #thanksanyway

@Epson_Store: @aimee_ogara That's good to hear. If you have any Epson questions in the future, feel free to ask.

“There is a human touch that can diffuse a situation,” Ploof says. “It's a voice. I can understand when someone is frustrated; they want to do something. They want their printer to work. We see these things all the time. In the past, we just kind of let that go. But now I want people to know that we are listening, that there are real people here. We're not just Epson Store; there's a real person at the other end, we heard you, and we're here to help. That's the voice that I'm trying to help develop here at Epson.”

Ploof has developed a process for finding and reacting to people on social networks. If people mention Epson in any way, Ploof and his colleagues know what's going on. The Epson Social Media Support Process flowchart is primarily designed to bring customer service calls found on social networks into the Epson America formal customer support process.

The Social Media Support Process flowchart ensures that those people such as the frustrated printer customer who tweeted that she hoped everyone who works for Epson America burns in hell are brought into the same customer support and complaint infrastructure as somebody who telephones the toll-free number.

“When I first came to Epson in October 2012, I started noticing something which I thought was really bizarre,” Ploof says. “I'd see someone reaching out to us on Twitter or Facebook, and the response process at the time would be a note like, ‘We'll have someone from customer support call you.’ And then they'd send an email to our director of customer support, who, in turn, would send it on to a manager. And the manager would then send it on to somebody else. I realized this was not a very sustainable way of doing support. So we took telephone support out of the loop because there was no reason why they should have to take every single one of those calls. And that's how the flowchart came about. Now if someone reaches out to us with a problem, and if we can find out what the model number is, we can immediately point them to a URL for a product web page with all kinds of support information, such as drivers and frequently asked questions. And there's also a phone number they can call if they need more help. Most of the time people say: ‘Oh, thank you. That solved my problem.’”

Most organizations force customers into an existing support structure, much in the way that Epson America used to. If you complained on Facebook, they'd respond by giving you a telephone number to call. However, truly excellent customer support and complaint resolution is best handled in the medium the customer prefers, be it Twitter, Facebook, email, or the good old telephone.

Because many of the issues that arise at Epson America are fairly common, Ploof has been working with his team of bloggers to create content around products and services that can be used to answer questions on social networks. “I ask bloggers, ‘Rather than answering a question 86 different times, what if we actually wrote a great blog post about that particular feature that's in your product or service? How can you come up with useful content that people are searching for?’” That content serves as the information that people are directed to when they need help.

This proactive approach to solving customer problems is working at Epson America. “I have seen us save customers,” Ploof says. “Some say they're never going to buy an Epson again. But we turn them around and they later write, ‘You guys are all right.’ You can't put your head in the sand. These conversations are happening with or without you. So you have to decide: Are you going to participate or not? I would rather participate and know what's going on than just ignore the whole thing.”

Great Customer Service Starts in Person

With all the discussion of terrific online customer service—such as the examples set by Epson America and charity: water—it's possible to lose sight of the fact that excellent service does not depend on how it is delivered. It can occur face-to-face, by telephone, or even by postcard. And it's important always to listen to your customers.

For example, Metro Bank is building success through its own brand of great customer service. Founded in 2010, Metro Bank is the first new High Street bank in the United Kingdom in 140 years. The market prior to Metro Bank's arrival was an oligopoly controlled by a handful of big banks including Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, and HSBC Bank. Anthony Thomson, co-founder and chairman of Metro Bank, knew there was an opportunity for a new entrant in the market because customer satisfaction among the established High Street banks was dire.

Interestingly, Thomson and his colleagues didn't look to other banks for market research. Instead they considered and studied how retailers like John Lewis and Apple deliver outstanding customer service. This led to Metro Bank's decision to open its retail bank branches seven days a week, 12 hours a day.

Metro Bank is also pet friendly, a feature that has prompted media attention. “It says to people, if they can bring their dog into our bank and we don't mind if he pees on the floor—or worse—which is what dogs do, then maybe we care more about you as a customer than we do about constantly maintaining our pristine decor,” Thomson says.

Metro Bank even ran a contest where dogs were given samples of three tasty treats and asked to vote for their favorites. The biscuit that garnered the greatest number of votes across Metro Bank's branches nationwide was named as the official Metro Bank Dog Biscuit.

The established banking institutions' reputation for delivering a poor in-person customer experience left Metro Bank with an open opportunity. Metro took full advantage of the situation to create a revolution in British banking by listening to customers (and their dogs). And it works. In just five years 2,000 Metro Bank employees serve over 500,000 customers across 40 banking locations. The company has risen from a start-up to become one of Britain's leading challenger banks.

Customer Service “Wow!”

Here's another example of great in-person customer service.

After many years of going through travel bag after travel bag, I decided to buy one of higher quality, and after some online research I invested in a Tumi Frequent Traveller bag several years ago. With a price tag of $600, these things are not cheap.

Based on my speaking calendar alone, I calculate that I've put something like a half-million air miles on that Tumi bag since I purchased it. Together, that bag and I have visited at least 25 countries. It clearly shows it has been well used; the scuffs, dirt, and scars on its surface offer a visual chronicle of our adventures around the world.

I didn't have any trouble with the bag for nearly four years, which was much longer than any other bag I've owned. It had already paid for itself. So when the retracting handle broke, I figured it was time for a new one. I wondered if it could be fixed. Probably not, I thought, but it was worth a shot.

Thinking that I'd need to purchase a new Tumi (a half-million air miles is more than “normal wear and tear,” isn't it?), I went on a Sunday afternoon to a Tumi retail store in Boston. The salesperson took one look at the bag and said she could fix it by installing a new handle mechanism, “but it would take a few days.”

Cool, I thought. “Please do!”

Since I wouldn't be able to return to the store to pick it up, I offered to pay to have it shipped to my home.

She wouldn't hear of it and said they would send it back to me at no cost.

I was amazed that less than 48 hours after I left the bag at the Tumi shop, UPS delivered the repaired bag to my door.

Wow!

The new handle works like a charm, and since then it has probably added another 200,000 air miles to its travel log.

How about that? I went into the store expecting to replace the bag that had served me well for four years. I was planning on spending $600 on a new one. Instead, at no charge, my old one was repaired. Remarkable.

And here I am telling you.

In a world where most companies are only interested in today's transaction, great customer service like that from Tumi is an excellent marketing and sales strategy. Someday when my bag is finally beyond repair, I'll buy another Tumi. I'm a customer for life.

And maybe you will be a Tumi customer, too, after hearing my story.

Or better yet, maybe you'll look at your own company's customer service and imagine how you can turn it into one where people go “Wow!”

First, Educate and Inform Your Customers

The only time customers hear from many organizations is when the organizations send out ridiculous “Your opinion is valuable to us” feedback requests. Some companies, including many hotel chains, send out a survey request after every use of the product. They just ask, ask, ask, ask, ask!

Many customers find this practice highly annoying. It often seems you never hear from a company you do repeat business with except when it wants something back from you. And if you take the trouble to fill out the online form, you never hear back about the survey results or what the company plans to do with them.

There is a much better way.

If companies insist on conducting a survey, it must be real, meaningful research—not just some inane measure of an aspect of the business that results in an internal report that nobody reads, let alone acts upon. And when you do contact your customers, why not offer something of value first?

Why not offer a video link showing how people use the product your customer just purchased? Then ask for opinions.

Why not link to the company blog that talks about common customer issues and how they can be easily solved? Then ask for opinions.

Why not link to the online forums for the service that your customer just signed up for? Then ask for opinions.

Why not tell them, in writing, the answers to the service question you just provided to them over the phone? Then ask for opinions.

The important idea here is to educate and inform your consumers first and then ask for a survey to be completed.

Surveys: Your Opportunity to Gather Real Data

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Jackson Healthcare is among the largest healthcare staffing and technology companies in the United States. It currently serves more than seven million patients in over 1,300 healthcare facilities. For Jackson Healthcare, market research and surveys are an important source of content that is delivered to customers and used in marketing. Research from Jackson Healthcare has been featured on CNN, Fox News, and other national and industry media channels.

“We work with healthcare providers both in direct relationships and by providing referrals, and our research gets used during our work with our clients,” says Keith Jennings, vice president of marketing at Jackson Healthcare. The company serves healthcare providers, including physicians, nurses, and other allied health professionals, as well as hospitals and health systems. “Our research and surveys are designed to discover existing unsolved problems in the interaction between providers and healthcare facilities, and any possible opportunities that might resolve them. We gather as much data as possible, and publish reports that shed light on the problems that we see and any trends that we think need to be addressed.”

The research is packaged into easy-to-digest reports that are delivered back to the same groups that were surveyed. “We then use the research to kick-start and facilitate conversations on both sides of the table—the providers on one side, and the healthcare facilities on the other,” Jennings says. “In the healthcare world, the two groups—clinical and operational—are constantly looking for ways to better engage and influence the other side.”

Jackson Healthcare research is designed to provide value for customers who complete the surveys. “It is thought leadership,” Jennings says. “Our operating companies have capitalized on the opportunity to connect the research to valuable content they deliver to the two constituents: the providers and healthcare facilities.”

Jackson Healthcare worked with one of its operating companies on a national study of physicians to explore why and when they changed the geographical locations of their medical practices. “We examined the decisions physicians face if they are looking to relocate,” Jennings says. “We studied whether they are a resident or a veteran physician. When they make a decision to relocate, we wanted to determine the leading factors that influence their thinking, and why they choose a different location to practice medicine. Is geography a major factor? A particular region? How important is the lifestyle that an area offers? Was their spouse a factor? We generated a list of possible trigger points that we then surveyed with physicians and tested with research. This resulted in a report that we shared with both physicians and in-house recruiters in hospitals.”

Unlike the vast majority of organizations that carelessly send surveys to customers without thinking about how the request will be received, Jennings says that Jackson Healthcare pays close attention to the survey experience and has developed a four-step process. “Every year we do a Physician Practice Trends survey,” he says. “Before we ever reach the deadline to launch the survey, we start a conversation. We send an initial email that says, ‘We have a survey coming, but you may not have seen the results of last year's, so here it is.’ Those emails help drive expectation and engagement.”

Using Customer Feedback to Grow Revenue

Organizations have been conducting customer surveys for decades. Until recently, the questions were either asked and answered face-to-face with the survey taker holding a clipboard, conducted over the telephone, or sent and returned through the mail. But with the web, most companies now rely on electronic surveys because they are far cheaper and less time-consuming to implement.

But nearly all organizations using e-surveys are missing a massive opportunity. An electronic survey is by definition providing real-time insights into individual customers, because, when customers hit “send” on their responses, the answers reflect their feelings about the company and product at that precise moment. This intelligence has staggering utility. But because most companies still view surveys through the historical lens of past paper-based survey techniques and apply them to the web, they fail to take advantage of the power to understand customer satisfaction in real time. Instead of reacting to customers in real time, they warehouse their survey results. Instead of treating people as humans, companies aggregate data into rows and columns on a spreadsheet.

Imagine the possibilities of real-time customer feedback! When unhappy customers voice disaffection, the damaged relationships could be repaired by swiftly addressing the problems, thus reducing customer churn. And the possibility of identifying opportunities for growth in comments from delighted customers would mean new sales.

“You keep customers happy, not by doing something different from how you won them in the first place, but by doing exactly the same things,” says Guy Letts, founder of CustomerSure, a maker of all-in-one feedback software. “I don't know why the mind-set shifts. You win customers one at a time according to their own needs, you fit the proposition to their needs, you say nice things to them, you listen to them, and you win them over. Then once you've won them over, most companies treat customers differently.”

Letts advocates the use of customer feedback to keep more clients and win new business, something that surprisingly few companies actually do. Most companies take hard-won data gleaned from individual customers and dumb it down by averaging it and then putting it into a spreadsheet to be sent to senior executives, most of whom don't even read the resulting report.

The inappropriateness of the way many companies survey their valuable customers is profound. “I like to use the example of a restaurant,” Letts says. “It's not appropriate to send a survey to somebody halfway through their meal. What is appropriate in that circumstance is for the waiter to come up when you've just had your meal and say, ‘Is everything okay? Was the food okay? Are you happy with how we're looking after you?’ To which the answer is either ‘Fine, thank you very much’ or ‘Not so great.’ And the waiter graciously replies either ‘Good, enjoy the rest of your evening’ or ‘I'm terribly sorry. Let me fix that for you.’ Then they fix it appropriately and give you a round of free drinks or whatever would leave you wanting to come back again.”

But the way that most companies survey customers isn't anything like what a good restaurant does. Instead, what's practiced in most companies today would be like having an excellent waiter in a great restaurant serve you a gorgeous two-hour meal and then damage the customer interaction at the very end. “It might be a member of the dishwashing staff standing between you and the exit door with a clipboard and 20 pages of questions with the request, ‘Would you mind sparing 20 minutes?’ That's what people experience with most company surveys,” Letts says.

Before founding CustomerSure, Letts was head of services at Sage Ltd, where he used his experience to transform 10 percent attrition into 20 percent growth. When Letts joined Sage, one of the first things he did was read surveys that had been conducted before he joined the company. “My heart sank as I read them because there was cry after cry for help in these satisfaction surveys,” he says. “They had been done the traditional way, which is actually the wrong way: every customer surveyed at once. Not only had nothing been done about these responses; nobody had even read them. There were about 20,000 responses in each survey, and I spent hours reading them. It was heartbreaking. I worked out that six out of ten of the responses represented customers who had left, but had been savable if someone had made the effort.”

How to Conduct a Survey That Helps Grow Revenue

Letts decided on a different approach to using surveys. The old surveys wasted a large amount of people's time by asking them to fill out data sheets that were then averaged and used for management reports. Letts's new approach focused on individual customer attitudes toward a company, its products, and its services with the goal of identifying problems and fixing them immediately. He recommends a three-step process to growing revenue by conducting real, meaningful surveys:

1. If you're conducting a survey that allows customers the opportunity to provide your organization with feedback, don't prejudge what they might tell you. The very first thing is to make sure the entire organization understands why you're doing the survey.
2. You have to be geared up to deal with any problem that might present itself. Make sure that others in the organization are prepared to react as customer issues come in.
3. If you decide surveys are right, send them after you've delivered something meaningful to a customer at a time when it would be appropriate for that customer to receive a survey.

“What you see people teach about customers is wrong,” Letts says. “The books and consultants typically say: listen, filter, then act. This doesn't work. They say listen by gathering all the responses and then determine the most common themes. Then filter them down by working through several spreadsheets, PowerPoint slide decks, and C-level executive meetings. Because people think they can't possibly do everything, they prioritize and finally end up doing the top three. And the result is so bland that nobody notices any difference.”

Instead, Letts advocates changing the commonly accepted model to: listen, act, filter. “Hear from the customers and immediately triage it and deal with anything that needs to be done,” he says. “And then after that look for patterns and trends and insights about how the company should be developing, what should be done, what is going right, and where are things going wrong.”

Letts says the first step is to make sure that you're ready to respond to customer issues in real time. If not, don't do the survey! “Before you even think about surveys, it's important to make sure that everyone in the company has bought into why you're doing them,” he says. “Every individual in the organization has to understand the benefits; otherwise they will be done badly. Very often when the results identify a problem area, someone else will need to be engaged since the person receiving the information or triaging the survey will not be the best person to deal with the issues at hand. It could be anything from ‘Oh, by the way, I've changed my address. Can you please update my account details?’ to ‘I haven't paid my bill because I'm still not happy about something.’ It could be absolutely anything.”

At most companies, important information like a request to update an address or a cry for help is simply ignored when a customer reports it in a survey. By listening and acting on their problems, you'll impress customers with your responsiveness, and if you deal with the issues quickly you can save customers who were planning to leave.

An annual satisfaction survey is not a good approach. Instead, the best time to send a survey is after you've done something meaningful. “It's best if you have something to pin an experience to,” Letts says. “So for an accountant, it's after you've done the tax return. And it is essential to ask relevant questions. Don't ask how old they are or what newspaper they read or how they found out about you. Ask them whether you were good at the things they expect you to be good at. If you're a retailer, did the staff know what they're talking about and advise properly? Did you have the items that they wanted in stock? Were the staff friendly and fast to serve? Since that's pretty much all you want from a shop, just ask those questions.”

In a world where most companies send out surveys simply to calculate what percentage of their customers love them, such an approach is radical. Yet the idea that asking customers what they think and fixing problems before people quietly walk away seems such an easy concept. “We have a delightful customer called the Royal Institute of British Architects,” Letts says. “They implemented a system that surveyed their customers right after a sale. In a bumpy year, the sales team was walking around with smiles on their faces and all received bonuses. They certainly found that service sells.”

While there is no doubt that you can increase revenue by using surveys in this way, Letts offers caution. “It mustn't be cynical,” he says. “You can't simply survey customers because you want to uncover sales opportunities. The environment has to be geared up so everyone in the company understands how it fits into the process and how it supports the business objectives. There is no more valuable lesson than hearing what the customers think in their own words.”

In the next chapter, we'll expand on the idea of generating instant feedback from customers to look at many different aspects of agile customer support.