Why should your customers report to your processes?
Efficency may be the paramour of corporate management right now – but at what cost?
There’s no such thing as customer service. No such thing – because customer service is not one thing. Contrary to what many business books seem intend on preaching, and what the CRM technocrats have continued to trumpet, customer service cannot be adequately quantified singularly.
That’s because “customer service” should not be oriented around a single, generically set schedule of KPIs, response times and IVR technologies. Customer service by the numbers is not the basis for any form of difference, and the whole point of competitiveness, surely, is difference. You’d think we’d all agree on that, and yet so often, distinctiveness is the last thing that customers get.
“Hello, whoever you are”
A customer service experience based on “best practice” might be technically correct but too often it’s devoid of personality. And because everybody’s serving by the book rather than from the heart, all customers get is variations on the same tedium. Cut out the brand name, and they could be dealing with anybody. Hell, competing companies even use the same voice-over to tell you they’re too busy to talk with you right now, and would you mind holding while they replay all the songs you hate, very loudly, in your right ear.
So, if it’s not about a vanilla flavour of service, what is it about? Well, as far as I’m concerned, customer service should be about keeping your promise, your way. Promise? what promise? The one you’re making as a brand. That’s right, customer service needs to be branded. Generic customer service is the prevalent, boring and forgettable catch-all. Personalised, branded customer service is interesting and engaging, and relevant, because it delivers on the promise that your brand has made your customers. And surprise, surprise – promises vary, just like brands should vary. Because people’s motivations, expectations and priorities are different.
Offer any kind of customer service you like. Conditions apply.
The point is, the level of customer service you offer your customers can be as rudimentary or as sophisticated as you like. As long as you explain those terms of business to your customers very clearly, they understand that’s what they are getting, the terms of business and customer service align with your brand promise and personality, and your customers do business with you in the full and frank understanding of those terms.
Example: if you want to travel in Europe, you can travel by any number of airlines, including Easyjet. But if you choose Easyjet, you do so understanding that you need to book on the internet, that their planes leave from “alternative” airports and that the timetable may be different from a more mainstream choice. In return, Easyjet will give you a very good deal price-wise. Easyjet’s decision to work like this suits their business model – and it meets their customers’ demand for a simple, budget-driven travel alternative. They may not have the swish lounges, the pretentiously-named meals or the huge planes of their competitors, but their customer service is no better or worse than the pampering doled out on the most highly rated airlines in the world. It’s right for their customers. It’s right for the price. And most importantly, it’s bang on the brand – which is all about no fuss and lower markups. In short, easy.
Easyjet is a premier example of a customer service code arrived at by consensus. “This is how we work and why you save” - “That’s fine by me”.
Question: what can you afford to deliver? Question: what can you afford not to deliver?
By contrast, what frustrates people beyond vexing is when they are led to believe that they will receive a “premium” level of customer service, when in fact, they receive nothing of the sort. Such a mismatch occurs when the promise of “premium” has been made, inferred or assumed and has thus enabled the sale, but is never delivered because it quite simply has not been factored into the financials and operational systems of the company charged with delivering it, and/or no-one actually worried too much about who would be delivering the service (in terms of personality types) or what or how they would do so when they were recruiting and training staff.
For too many organisations, “customer” is an adjective not the objective. “Customer” is just a type of service. It’s a descriptor that has little or nothing to do with people, and everything to do with doing what has to be done – because, well, that’s business – and for little other reason. It is a service governed not by emotional engagement or the desire to excite but by SLAs that define what must be done (rather than what could be done).
It works like this – “they bought our products, and we promised we would provide them with customer service”. “We” don’t want to necessarily, but “we” feel we have to. It’s a cost of business thing. But “we” will do our damndest to make it as cheap, fast and simple as possible because that’s “smart”. We’ll cut some corners, fudge some issues, under-resource and hope for the best. So enjoyment will have nothing to do with the interaction and we’ll only train “our” people to deliver the minimum. “We” will meet our service level agreement stipulations. And then, because “we” have provided “them” (because that’s generally how customers are referred to in this context) with a range of services, ipso facto, “they” will have received “customer service”.
Case in point. A colleague of ours received what she considered to be a very rude note from her Internet Service Provider stating that her payment was due and that unless she paid immediately, basically they would cut her off at the knees. Fair enough perhaps if our colleague had a history of late payment. But no, as it turns out, she has always paid her ISP bill on time and she has never missed a payment.
When she emailed the ISP to complain, someone rang back to point that this was their standard letter, it was computer generated, it had to be this rude because otherwise people wouldn’t take it seriously and maybe our colleague was being just a little over-sensitive. Since the letter was sent automatically, she went on to suggest, perhaps our colleague could pay earlier to avoid receiving the notice ... Our colleague is currently considering her options – i.e. which ISP to change to and when?
What’s sad is that the ISP people can’t see that they’ve done anything wrong. There’s a process, it services the customer – ipso facto, they’ve done their bit. What’s the customer getting so upset about? Well, surprisingly, our colleague is not happy because she’s being threatened with a rude, smartass letter by a machine for always paying her bill on time! Our colleague’s view: why are you being rude to me when I’m meeting my obligations? Who the hell do you think you are? The ISP’s apparent view: hey, it’s our process, get over it!
Never mind that this is not the sort of service our colleague actually wants, expects or asked for, or more importantly, that was promised or implied. Doesn’t matter. It was a service and it was provided in a process. All the necessary operational boxes ticked. That’s it. Obligation met from the POV of the ISP. Case closed.
Time’s up, next please.
Funny isn’t it? No customer wants to feel resented, and yet so many organisations deliver resentful customer service – only what they have to, only up to a point, only in certain conditions, only what suits them, only with the information they have at hand ... only, only, only.
We once worked on a project for a major company where the call centre people had a 6 minute window for every call. That’s how long the operations people had calculated calls had to roll over at, in order to keep delays within their KPIs. If the call fell outside that window for any reason, the staff were under enormous pressure to finish the call, and get the person to ring back later. There were stories of people ringing a number of times ... just to get the basic facts out, and every time, they spoke with someone new, and ended up repeating their story, only to run out of time again, and ... well, you get the picture.
For this company, less calls was seen as a symbol of success – because it equated to less complaints. Now isn’t that interesting? Calls = complaints is not a highly motivating customer service equation, yet it was the carry-on of legacy thinking that had long become redundant. The operations people had fixed the queues and changed the potential mood for customers, but they hadn’t adjusted the process thinking. Their customers were happier, but the call centre staff were still in siege mode. For them, interaction was something that was to be discouraged, even though customers were now in a much more positive frame of mind The reason? Interaction still gave customers an opportunity to complain and thus blot the organisational scorecard.
This particular case also illustrates another vital point about good branded customer service. Keep it as single minded as possible. Within the 6 minute window mentioned above, staff were expected not just to assist the customer but also to upsell them to other products at the same time. Such an agenda confused everyone! Sometimes, the customer didn’t even have the chance to get their story out, before they were being asked to buy something else. Meanwhile, at the other end of the line, the contact team didn’t have time to pay attention, because they were looking through their cue cards for the sales opportunity. Both parties were talking right past one another. All the time, the clock was ticking ...
That’s not interaction, relationship building or assistance of any quality whatsoever. And it’s a long way from what the customer was expecting, never mind wanting.
The suggestion that maybe people with more complicated issues could be allowed to speak for longer instead of being forced to ring back time and time again was blithely dismissed as “inefficient”.
What do your customers expect? Who gave them those expectations?
Today many laugh smugly at the “stupidity” of the dot.com era – and yet, the same people-proof philosophies that powered that era are still alive and well throughout the land. The only difference is that “build it – and they will come” has been replaced by “deliver it – and they’ll be grateful”.
For anyone who believes that, however circumspectly, here’s the news. Companies may subscribe to that mantra but customers don’t. Customers want to know where they stand. If they have been led to believe that the company values them, then they expect to feel valued, respected and understood throughout their dealings with that brand. When they have a matter they want to talk about and they ring a contact centre, they actually want to talk to someone – why else would they ring? What they don’t want to do is press 4, 6, 12 or 52, fax a question, go to the internet, ring back during office hours or speak to an answer service.
Yet it’s extraordinary how many companies persist in not quantifying their levels of service to customers. Their reasoning goes something like this: there’s no end to what our customers would ask for if they could. We can’t afford that, so we’ll just do our best and with any luck they’ll understand.
Sorry, but they don’t. And the reason that they don’t understand is because they’ve never been given a reason to do so. Yes, they have high expectations, and yes, those expectations are continuing to rise. Are they unreasonable? Possibly. Which is why managing what your customers can expect in the way of service from you is a critical brand deliverable.
This is not to suggest for one moment that companies should publish their SLAs – perish the thought. It is to advocate, however, that particularly when you are looking to provide an “alternative” level of service, you manage the expectations of customers from the outset – so that they know what they’re getting for their money. If the call centre is only going to be open from 9am until 9pm – tell them! Don’t let them find out at 9.05pm!
Focusing expectations like this seems obvious, so why do so few companies do it and even fewer do it very well? Because they think it’s stupid to tell the truth, and that customers won’t come to them if they do. The fact is of course that exactly the opposite applies: oftentimes customers won’t stay because they feel let down. And the collateral fallout from disappointing service is far worse than “limited” service, because customers feel betrayed and uncared for.
Limited service can ring true
It doesn’t have to be this way. I buy my toll calls through a provider that charges me very little. The price I pay, the one they made very clear to me, was that if I need help, I can only go to their website and find an answer. If I ring them, I’ll be charged.
It would be easy to look at such an arrangement and feel outraged. How could they charge me to give me help? That’s not customer service. Sorry, but in this context, it absolutely is. Why? Because the terms for doing business with that provider are very clear, and I have chosen to accept them. It is an arrangement of convenience for both parties: they have a business model that works, I get the cheap calls I am looking for. And besides, just exactly how much help do I need to make a toll call? It’s hardly a significantly technical operation.
Branding is all about the promise made, and the promise kept. That’s why customers want to do business with companies that feel like part of their world. And customers give back what they get. Break faith with them, and they’ll break faith with you. Stay true, and there’s a far greater chance they will stay too.
Measures like the inflexible 6 minute rule are self defeating. Because if you’re impatient with your customers and they’re right in the middle of something that’s critically important to them, there’s a damn good chance they’ll reciprocate that impatience and intolerance. After all, if you haven’t got time to talk to them (and they feel they have paid for the right to talk to you) why should they give you the time of day when you want something back?
Efficiency, but at what cost?
Oh, and for those operational people beating the efficiency drum, here’s more bad news. Sure, curtailing calls to a 6 minute window may keep the queues down, but in the wider scheme of things, there’s nothing efficient about foreshortened customer service. Basically, it kills the very relationship you have been tasked with preserving and servicing. All the money, time and resources you’re spending as an organisation or a product line to communicate who you are and what you’re about through advertising, public relations, sponsorship, direct marketing and the web can be worth nothing if customers have a bad but efficient interaction with you and decide, wonder of wonders, that they don’t want to interact with you anymore.
Your customers should not report to your processes, because your processes are not their business. They’re part of your business. So why do so many companies only engineer their customer service around what they think their processes can handle? Why don’t they make the processes accountable to the customers instead of the other way around? Or at the very least, make reasonable and realistic promises to the customer on the levels of service they can expect. What have customers done to deserve being looked upon as the obstacle to the delivery of an efficient service, as opposed to the focus for that service?
Answer me that ... you have, let’s see, shall we say, 6 minutes?
6 ways to provide profitable customer service
In the meantime, think about this:
1. What exactly is the brand promise that your processes report to? Are you as good as your word?
2. Do you know what you can afford to promise your customers? In other words, is your brand promise financial viable? If it’s not, make it so, or change your model and reshape the promise. There’s no point in efficiently losing money or inefficiently losing customers!
3. Does everyone in your organisation know who your most valuable customers are, and what they expect to receive? How loyal are your people to the people who are loyal to you? How much permission have you given them to delight?
4. Does the service you offer your customers make sense emotionally to them as well as logistically? Is it in keeping with their understanding of what you’re about? How do you know it’s not wrong for your customers – have you ever asked them? Not about whether they’re “satisfied” but whether they actually “like” what they receive.
5. Do you have a BEO (Brand Experience Officer)? If not, who manages the experience of your brand on an ongoing basis? Anyone?
6. Everyone’s always upgrading their technology, but when was the last time you updated your processes to make them better for the customer as opposed to just making them more efficient for you? And if you did initialise a change for the better for your customers, was that experience upgrade dependent on new technology, or smarter use of what you have?
Mark Di Somma
Pusher, Audacity Group
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