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Guest Blog: Great Service vs Passable Completion
Author: Peggy Entrop
February 27, 2009
From time to time, Jason Dabrowski (a good friend of Vox) sends us his relevant and often hilarious customer experiences. He just sent us this story about dealing with Bodybuilding.com and the US Postal Service. You can read the full story on his personal blog.
Having spent a lot of years in one type of customer service job or another, I know a lot about how badly the experience can go. When I notice good customer service, I have to say something.
Today I’m talking about bodybuilding.com
Despite the name, bodybuilding.com isn’t just for bodybuilders. I’m no bodybuilder, and you don’t have to be one to find lots of useful information at bodybuilding.com. It’s part store, part fitness information supersite.
Wanna find a routine for cardio? Wanna find out what a deltoid is and what exercises build it’s strength and endurance? Wanna know what glutamine is for? They’ve got articles explaining all of this, and even have guides to show you which related products are the best value…
I ordered some protein powder and some vitamins over the weekend. Wednesday I decided to check my tracking information (Provided by bb.com in handy emails). The USPS website said that at 9:04am my shipment status was “arrival at unit.” My mailman never shows up at 9am. I’m lucky if our mail arrives by 2pm, and the zip code listed in this tracking page was wrong. No package outside, either.
So I emailed bodybuilding.com and asked for help. Having had trouble with other shipments in the past it always seems like UPS, FedEx, etc., don’t want to help the recipient and are more inclined to listen to the shipper. I also tried calling the USPS hot line. They had no tracking information (guess online is not connected to phone setup, bad bad idea) and not only that when I tried pressing zero or saying “Customer Service” i was rudely greeted with “this system has updated and accurate information, customer service is not a selection at this time.”
Bodybuilding.com responded with a different number, but I had the same result. After informing them of the same result, something occurred to me. ”Arrival at Unit” doesn’t sound like “Delivered” to me. A search of USPS.com revealed nothing (big surprise), but a Google search revealed that “Arrival at Unit” translates into English as “it’s at your local post office now“.
I had overreacted.
Seconds later Bodybuilding.com responded with an apology and letting me know that had already put in a reshipment order, and threw in a shaker cup for free for the inconvenience.
I wrote a profuse apology and explained that I had overreacted, that if I need any more assistance, I would let them know and that I would try to be more patient in the future. They responded that it was okay, gave another apology and said to contact them if there was more trouble.
Later in the evening, I decided to check USPS again to see if they had an estimated delivery date or something. I assumed it would be Thursday. Well, unfortunately the website said this:
“Your item was undeliverable as addressed at 2:33 PM on February 25, 2009 in OAK PARK, IL [redacted zip code]. It is being returned if appropriate information is available.”
Super. I had overreacted, bb.com reshipped, and I had just told them earlier they could cancel the reshipment. It would appear that I now needed that reshipment. So I passed the info on to them, and they said they would not only reship the items, but were now waiving my shipping fee because of the mess. They apologized AGAIN.
So many apologies from the company that’s actually doing the right thing, and yet “customer service is not a selection” at the business that is at fault. But don’t fret, it gets BETTER!
This morning I went to the gym, came home and was working on some job application stuff when the buzzer rang. Yep, you guessed it. I pressed the “talk” button and said “yes?” and the response was “Package for Jason?” You’ve got to be kidding me. Went downstairs and sure enough, a box for me from bodybuilding.com. Took it upstairs and yes, it’s the original order I placed.
So now, I’m feeling like a complete moron. The CS people must think I’m an a-hole.
Yet they stepped up to the plate, consistently, on this order. There was no questioning me or trying to tell me to calm down and be patient, nope.
- They immediately apologized, and started a reshipment.
- Their communication was quick and efficient.
- They added value to the order by throwing an additional, related product (protein powder needs shaker cups), at no charge. They’re probably less than 5 bucks, but still, nice touch.
- When it looked like the shipper was failing to deliver on purpose now, they waived shipping altogether and did the reshipment again.
When you look at it, with the cancellations and waiving and trying to give me more products, they probably spent more time and effort on me than they were going to make on this one sale. And remember, none of this was THEIR fault. This problem all started when a overly eager customer (me) overreacted and involved the poor service and communication of USPS, two things that are not the responsibility of bodybuilding.com. Things that bb.com couldn’t have anticipated at all.
But now, I, the silly customer, have my products. I also know that I am buying products not just from a great store with great prices and loads of information on fitness, they also have the kind of customer service you wish you could get elsewhere. Wouldn’t it be great if, say, Comcast was this responsive? I think I would die of shock if my cable company was this dedicated to customer service. Course, they need all the money they could be spending on keeping customers happy to make moderately humorous commercials with talking turtles and overblown puns.
Connecting With Patients in the ER
Author: Jeannie Walters
February 24, 2009
According to this story on NPR, only infants go to the Emergency Room at a higher rate than people 75 and older. But in most cases, the experience at the ER does not reflect this. There are some ERs now designed exclusively for kids, but what about seniors?
Speaking from experience, I know that as a parent you really have to advocate - sometimes loudly - when being treated at the ER. There’s commotion and different doctors and nurses popping in and out. When my son was there a few years ago, I remember needing to run out and track someone down when I noticed he was getting worse.
So what’s it like for a 90 year-old? It may be a jarring, uncomfortable experience.
Holy Cross Hospital in Maryland decided to create an ER just for these patients, including ensuring specialists with a focus on the needs of geriatric patients would be available. The focus on the patient provides better care across the board.
Each detail was not only thoughtfully considered, but also evaluated by experts and even tested by patients. When they considered painting the walls a soothing blue, experts on aging eyes told them it may come across as gray…dirty and dingy. So they set a new course to paint rich, brown walls with lots of white contrast.
They tested and gathered feedback before committing to some basic purchases. Patients in this age group came in to try out various mattresses. They were all softer and more comfortable than typical hospital beds, but the winner wasn’t selected until patients had been given a voice.
Here’s the real beauty of this very customer-centric approach…the problems that bring most of us to the ER are quick fixes - true trauma. But the causes of senior visits are often related to chronic issues and need long-term care. Now the focus is on a holistic approach to treating patients so there is appropriate follow up and outreach. Becoming customer focused allowed this hospital to provide much better care for the patients.
It’s also a great example of how making changes to the immediate experience can create a long-term relationship.
It’s a wonderful idea, and it shows what really knowing who your customers are can do - recreate the entire experience for the better of all involved.
Follow Jeannie on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jeanniecw
For Great Customer Experience: Is It The Palapa or The Process?
Author: Bill Cusick
February 20, 2009
My wife Marti and I just spent a few days in a beachside all-inclusive resort on the Riviera Maya, the strip of land running south of Cancun along the Caribbean, right on the tip of Mexico. We were there for a CEO Retreat, which included a couple of dinners and a rather long meeting. Then we stayed for two more nights to just chill.
The resort was beautiful: palm trees, “palapas,” (basically tropical looking thatched-roofed beach umbrellas), swim-up bars in the pools and an incredible beach. The service? Not so much. Everyone was extremely friendly, and they clearly wanted to please, but there was a real drop in the follow-up phase. We didn’t get the right room, and some of the promises to correct mistakes turned out to be empty.
So, good experience or bad? For most customers, it’s the context that counts. And in the context of laying by a pool, or on a beach, the overall awesomeness of the environment outweighed the “island time” approach to service. Yeah, it might take an extra minute or two to get a cocktail, but it’s free (or so it seems in the all-inclusive), and maybe the next one will arrive a little quicker. In the meantime the sun is bright and the breeze is sublime, and you can just listen to the waves lap nearby.
Follow Bill on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bill1vox
Why I Hate Focus Groups, and You Should, too
Author: Jeannie Walters
February 19, 2009
When discussing customer experience with our clients, we always start from discovery. How much do we know about your customers? How much can we learn? Inevitably, two words pop up as a means of gathering information: Focus Group!
Focus groups seem so appealing. They are inexpensive in time and money; they appeal to the voyeur in us; they seem to offer a glimpse into what our customers want.
I hate focus groups, and do everything in my power to get away from them. You can learn SO much more from one-on-one conversations or testing, depending on what type of information you’re gathering.
A podcast of Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life got me thinking. The premise of the show was a question: can one bad apple spoil the whole bunch? Can one person ruin it for the rest of us?
I believe that the answer is a simple, straightforward YES.
In a focus group, the bad apple (and there’s always one) ruins it, and makes the rest of us behave in ways we normally wouldn’t.
According to Will Felps, (a professor who researches “bad apple teammates” featured on This American Life) one person can highly influence others’ behavior. He proved that in as little as 45 minutes, others will adopt the bad apple behaviors - spoiling the whole bunch.
Well, Felps separated the bad apple behavior into 3 categories:
1. The Jerk - attacks and insults others
2. The Slacker - doesn’t do as much as others
3. The Depressive Pessimist - complains; doubts group success
The end result of introducing one of these bad apples into a group was that people communicated less and did not share ideas.
Imagine what this implies for focus groups. When you’re trying to learn about customers, the LAST thing you want is to prevent people from communicating. If a bad apple personality is present, others will clam up, just get through it, and leave feeling frustrated not only about the experience but also about what they were evaluating - YOUR product, brand, site, etc.
One-on-one interviews, user testing, and even customer surveys (when done well) can lead to intelligent data about your customers’ wants and needs. Combine this with behavioral data and you have powerful information to build a better experience.
Just like those bad apples - focus groups just lead to rotten results.
Follow Jeannie on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jeanniecw
Be Better by Being Wrong
Author: Luis Serpa
February 17, 2009
I don’t know anyone who wants to be wrong. Our culture is wired with a deep, primal need to always be right, which leads us to deceive ourselves into believing we actually are always right, which again leads us to believe that everyone else is wrong.
Normally, one would think this is just another eccentricity of human nature and actually a pretty good defense mechanism in a competitive world (it takes a lot of confidence and determination to be successful, to win), but when it comes to Customer Experience, being right won’t necessarily do much good for you.
You see, at the root of most customer experience problems you’ll often find two opposite sides, both believing their view of the issue is the right one. The problem here is perspective. Anyone in customer service is fundamentally wrong in thinking that service has anything to do with whether or not the customer is right. I’m not saying representatives should assume the customer is always right. In my experience, the customer is often wrong, but that’s not the issue!
The important thing to understand is that the customer’s feelings are always right! It doesn’t matter why they’re angry, irritated, frustrated or upset, just that they feel that way. Your job, as a representative of your company is to acknowledge those feelings and do whatever you’re empowered to do in order to make them feel better. Focusing on trivial details, like who did or said what, is irrelevant. The only things you should consider are: “what can I do to help this person?” and what can I do to make sure this problem doesn’t happen again?” This perspective will not only resolve the immediate problem but make your job easier in the future.
Some of the best examples of GOOD customer service come from situations where someone was honestly willing to discard his original perspective. In my experience, a good customer service professional always assumes he could be wrong while listening to consumer complaints. Not fighting to be right is the only safe way to achieve true empathy.
Put yourself entirely in the customer’s shoes, and consider the problem from their perspective instead of your own.
I know some of you will say that this could be bad for business, or that it is imprudent or risky to think others are always right, but let’s consider this for a minute:
Always thinking you may be wrong:
- Eliminates the pressure to compete or to “win” the debate as a way to successfully resolve the situation
- Allows you to be less defensive and more open to what the customer says
- Removes emotional attachment you can better listen to the problem and understand how it affects the customer
- Actually helps to find a solution that will please the customer
- Gives the customer a sense of being victorious, successful and confident about engaging your brand/company again in the future
- Makes loyal customers happy and make happy customers loyal (note: Happy customers won’t bad-mouth your company to friends and may in fact praise you on your conflict resolution skills!)
Needing to always be right:
- Automatically escalates the conflict by upping the stakes of winning or losing
- Makes both sides defensive and unwilling to actually hear the other side’s perspective
- Inflames strong emotions and irrational behaviors that have nothing to do with the real problem being discussed (like wanting to fight just to feel justified and complain to everyone about the terrible experience you had with that company)
- Masks the underlying causes of the situation, making it even harder for the company to discover potential problems that will soon affect profitability
- Makes a resolution only achievable by defeating one party and rendering both sides frustrated
- Extends the length of the conflict, wasting more of the company time and manpower.
- Makes upset customers more frustrated, even after getting what they wanted. They will spread the word about the terrible experience they had to endure!
So, my suggestion to all of you is: When it comes to handling your customers’ experience, strive to be wrong. It’s good for your business. It’s good for your customers’ experience, and it’s good for your success.
If nobody wins, then nobody loses. And that’s how everyone wins.
Am I right?
Follow Luis on Twitter at www.twitter.com/luiserpa
Don’t Try to Guess Customer Behavior
Author: Luis Serpa
February 11, 2009
It’s interesting how you can find Customer Experience wisdom in the strangest places. The message I got for this post came in fact from a Sci-Fi Novel was reading yesterday (The Dark Tower III, by Stephen King). In it, two of the main characters were discussing odd human reactions to certain situations when making decisions.
The dialogue went more or less like this:
Character 1 (Ed): “I was just thinking about how stupid some people can be. You put them in a room with 6 doors and they’ll still walk into the walls… And then have the nerve to bitch about it!”
Character 2 (Suzanna): “If you are afraid of what might be on the other side of the doors, maybe bouncing off the walls seems safer…”
That got me thinking immediately on how similar this dialogue could be to any number of companies receiving complains on their Customer Experiences:
Company Manager (Ed): “I was just thinking about how stupid our website users can be. You offer them 6 different product views and they still prefer to call the 1-800 number to get the information… And then they have the nerve to complain they couldn’t find it online!”
CX Expert (Suzanna): “If they don’t know how to use those 6 views or are overwhelmed by how to find the product in the first place, maybe calling the 1-800 seems safer and faster…”
The moral of the story here is that nobody should guess Customer Behavior based on what customers “bitch about” when they speak to you. What you are hearing is how they see and rationalize YOUR problem and not what motivated theirs. Customers are irrational and they don’t really care about what drives them to do something, they just do it.
Real behavioral knowledge comes from observing your customers and understanding their basic fears and motivations. Without a sincere effort to understand Customer Behavior, what you think would be a solution for their grumble might exacerbate the exact problem you are trying to solve.
So it doesn’t matter how many features (doors) you put in front of your customer. If they don’t know what they are there for and you are not trying to address their real motivations (fear of what’s on the other side), you will end up watching your customer bouncing off the walls, refusing to use the doors and still blame YOU for a lousy customer experience.
And guess what? They are absolutely right…
Follow Luis on Twitter at www.twitter.com/luiserpa
Connecting with Younger Banking Customers
Author: Peggy Entrop
February 9, 2009
I just read about Servus Credit Union’s Young & Free community. This online community is all about connecting with Servus’s younger bankers.
They found an engaging young spokesperson and heavily connected them to social media. The website is vibrant, multi-media and is not obviously about banking.
In Servus’s own words, they are “teaching young people about financial topics with videos that don’t suck.”
Well, I’m a young person (I think), and I’d like to thank Servus, because I really really really appreciate videos that don’t suck.
I also appreciate companies that look for new and innovative ways to connect with their customers.
More of Servus’s own words: “We launched Young & Free because we felt strongly that young people were not being well served by large faceless financial institutions. Young people in Alberta didn’t have a voice when it came to getting what they needed financially. So we launched a search for a spokesperson and gave that person a platform: the Young & Free Alberta website.”
Good work, Servus!
Follow Peggy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/entrop
Are Customer-Indifferent Companies Getting the Message? Evidence is Mixed.
Author: Bill Cusick
February 5, 2009
We’ve all heard the nightmare customer stories about a handful of companies: Comcast, AT&T, and Dell to name just a few. The complaints are myriad - everything from labyrinthine call center menus, to poor service, to general belligerence. While we’ve all heard the stories, the question is: have Comcast, AT&T, and Dell listened, and are they doing something about it?
Of course I’m just picking on those three, but they serve as appropriate effigies to whack around when spotlighting poor customer service and relationships. There are indications that at least these poster children are taking steps to hone their customer experience efforts. Dell and Comcast have both had strong presences on Twitter and other social media sites, encouraging more real-time conversations with groups of engaged customers and nipping some customer service issues in the bud, before they become viral PR problems. Dell’s gone so far as to offer exclusive discounts to the influencer on Twitter.
Anecdotally, I just heard from a colleague who described a very recent call into Comcast. My friend procrastinated and approached the call with trepidation based on previous experience. Consider his surprise then, when the service rep he dealt with was pleasant and knowledgeable spending almost 40 minutes on the call answering questions, and even called back the next day at a prearranged time to be sure she could help him through the entire situation. Crazy, right?
And what of AT&T? The partnership with Apple on the iPhone caused much head shaking among those who had personal experience with some of AT&T’s past service issues (as well as its predecessors Ameritech and SBC). And a quick scan of the webosphere confirms that despite some limited activity in social media, they still have a long way to go. In fact they were just passed by Sprint in terms of service and overall customer satisfaction.
So the consensus is, there is no consensus. Until the senior management of each company makes a sincere commitment to honestly recognize and acknowledge the issues and puts real resources and muscle behind improving the situation (which looks to be the case with Comcast, Dell and Sprint), no amount of lip service to customer satisfaction will make a lick of difference.
Follow Bill on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bill1vox
Jewel-Osco, Chase and Employee Indifference
Author: Peggy Entrop
February 3, 2009
What happens when you have a great website, great ads, but a terrible in-person, face-to-face customer experience?
That’s a dumb question, right?
Every few weeks, my coworker and I run to the grocery store to stock our office kitchen. We usually spend a couple of hundred dollars. We started doing this after a really fantastic new Jewel-Osco grocery store opened up right up the street.
The new grocery store is gigantic. It’s clean. It has an amazing selection. And, it has the grumpiest, meanest, rudest cashiers known to man. I learned awhile ago that I’m much better off going to the self-check-out, because then I won’t have to deal with the cashiers.
Guess what will happen when another option for getting our groceries presents itself?
That’s a dumb question, too.
Perhaps no-one needs customer loyalty more than banks right now. So, what are banks doing to win our trust and secure our loyalty?
A co-worker relayed this story of her recent trip to a Chase branch:
There was nowhere to sign in or anyone to direct me, so I walked up to teller. After a few minutes, I was asked if I needed help, but when I answered “Yes,” the lady answered a phone, and apparently forgot she had already asked me if I needed help, because a few moments later, she asked me once more.
She then went into the banker’s cubicle for a couple minutes, came back out and walked right past me, obviously forgetting what she went in for.
Finally, she saw that I was still waiting and went back into the banker’s cubicle. When she came out she told me that he would be with me shortly and walked away.
I waited in the seating area as another customer came in to see a banker. When the lady came back only two minutes later and saw me in the sitting area, she asked if I had been seen yet! I said no-by now very annoyed.
When I finally saw the banker, I was rushed out of the banker’s cubicle so that he could go to lunch.
I decided to never go to that Chase location again.
What really bothers us as customers more than employee indifference? What are businesses doing to engage and empower their employees?
Follow Peggy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/entrop
Can Dell Find Its Way Back?
Author: Bill Cusick
February 2, 2009
In 1999, the magazine FastCompany published an article by Scott Kirsner titled “The Customer Experience.” It focused on a select group of companies that were seen as leaders in providing a high-level customer experience, with a special spotlight on Dell Computer.
At the time, Dell was seen as an organization that “gets it.” The article noted that, hanging in a majority of the cubicles in the company’s headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, was a sign stating simply: “The Customer Experience: Own It.” Those first three words, “The Customer Experience,” were, Dell founder Michael Dell declared at the time, the key to determining who would win or lose in the Web world.
Flash forward ten years:
Dell recently agreed to pay $3.85 million under a settlement with 46 states, involving a large number of allegations that Dell had engaged in a variety of deceptive practices to sell its products. According to a recent article in Macworld, there were a number of questionable activities that could mislead customers. Specifically, “Some customers never received rebates they were promised, while those who applied for zero-percent financing were charged higher interest rates. Some consumers also had trouble obtaining warranty service on the Dell PCs, according to the Washington State Attorney General’s Office.”
Read the full article about how Dell’s Customer Experience has shifted over the last decade here: http://www.voxinc.com/customer-experience-articles/dell-customer-champion-to-scapegoat.html
Follow Bill on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bill1vox
