Five Commandments of Customer Service

by Bob Massey

Recently I was with some friends lamenting the closing of yet another area business. Let me clarify that -- they were lamenting. I was rejoicing. You see, I had been a customer there -- and vowed never to be one again.

Don't get me wrong -- I want businesses in my community to thrive. It's just that some of them don't deserve to.

If I ask you to list your company's assets, will you rattle off items such as inventory, office furniture, computer equipment, etc. -- and neglect to mention your customers -- which is your single most important asset? If so, you wouldn't be alone. Yet your business exists only because of your customers!

I work for a high-powered, full-service advertising, marketing and public relations agency. The Miami Herald has listed us in the top 15 such agencies in South Florida. There's a helluva lot we can do to get customers to visit your business. But there's one thing we can't do: We can't convince customers to come back again and again IF you've ignored them, lied to them or been disrespectful to them (or even if they perceive that's the way they've been treated).

You can avert certain disaster by putting customer satisfaction at the top of your "Things to do today" list. I'm not Moses, so I'll give you just five commandments that, if ignored, may not result in your business being struck by a lightning bolt -- but you'll probably suffer a customer drought of apocalyptic proportions.

Acknowledge thy customers
My wife lost her cell phone, made arrangements to pick up a new one at the store. The problem wasn't that we spent so long in line because there were only two employees -- it's that those employees IGNORED us. Only one of them attended to the customers -- while the other concentrated on paperwork! And this while there was a line of impatient people forming! No one even bothered to say, "Sorry about the wait. Someone will be with you in a few minutes." We might as well have not gone into the store. And we won't, come contract renewal time.

Honor thy customers
A government office planned a lunch meeting with a dozen local bigwigs. The administrative assistant -- I'll call her Kathy -- contacts a restaurant a few days before to make certain they can provide sandwiches. Kathy tells the caterer she needs the food by 11:45 a.m. No problem, she's told.

By noon on the day of the meeting, no food has arrived ... so Kathy calls. The restaurant staffer doesn't think the sandwiches will be delivered anytime soon because a larger order -- for about 150 sandwiches -- came in. Kathy explains that she made arrangements way in advance for the restaurant to provide service. Now she has people arriving for a meeting who need to eat lunch -- and she needs her order immediately. No can do, she's told. Kathy asks to speak to the manager. Of course, the manager's unavailable ... but the restaurant staffer says she'll see what she can do.

The meeting starts. The meeting ends (about an hour later). No one has eaten. Kathy is apologizing all over herself. Shortly thereafter, the restaurant manager calls. She's got the sandwich order ready and will be delivering it pronto. Kathy explains that she no longer needs the sandwiches -- or the restaurant's business.

Moral of the story: Don't sacrifice your integrity for the sake of greed. Treat customers as though they're second class, and they'll reward you by patronizing your competitor.

Forgive thy customers
A few years ago, I took my family to Disney World. I remembered to pack everything -- except the tickets! I panicked, ready to make the two-plus-hour ride back home to get them. But Disney's Customer Service people assured me there'd be no problem, and provided me with new tickets -- without a hassle and without making me feel stupid -- or, worse, like a criminal who was trying to sneak into the park. I was so impressed, I told my friends (thus producing "word of mouth" advertising -- one of the most powerful tools in any marketer's arsenal).

Bend for thy customers
I purchased a book of coupons with two-for-one deals at local restaurants. One sandwich shop -- clearly listed as a participating establishment -- refused to honor it. The manager said she didn't agree to be represented in the book, and I should call the company that printed it. I was embarrassed.

The deal would have cost them a paltry $7. Not only did I leave, taking with me the $35 I would have spent to feed the rest of my family of seven, I also decided we would boycott their business. So we did, for about a year -- easily costing them more than $400. Do the math.

 Repent to thy customers
Three years ago, I pick up a pizza at a place we patronized (past tense) nearly once a week. Take it home, open the box -- wrong topping. First mistake. Call the pizza parlor ... the staff tells me to drive back to get a new one. Second mistake. Take it home, open the box -- burnt to a crisp. Third mistake. Another call to the pizza parlor. Staff tells me to drive back AGAIN to get a new one. Fifth mistake. (No, I didn't miscount. That mistake was so obnoxious, it counts as two.) In essence, I paid for their incompetence with my time and my gas -- and the worst part is: Not one person bothered to say, "We're sorry." Haven't been back since. Again, do the math.

These are just a few personal examples. I'm sure you could cite several of your own. Point is: If you don't make customer service a priority, your business will likely fail. And you'll deserve it.

Bob Massey has won state and national awards as a business writer, and is Account Services Director for the Florida Gulf Coast Office of KSR, a full-service marketing agency. You can contact him at (941) 255-1055, or e-mail bob@ksrteam.com. 

Contact Us?

So, why do companies list "Contact Us" information if, when you do contact the company via that information, no one responds?

What's Missing? Simple Courtesy

Unfortunately, this is more the norm than the exception anymore:

From Ray Edwards blog 8/31/10

 

 I ordered a sandwich this past week at McDonald’s, from the drive-through window.

After pulling out of the drive-through lane, I discovered that my sandwich was cold. The bacon was uncooked. I circled back through the drive-through lane, and explained my dilemma to the young lady at the window. She distractedly held out her hand, reaching for the bag, looking away from me as she muttered, “Pull around front. We’ll get you another one.”

I understand that these things happen, especially at a restaurant run by children. I wasn’t really upset as I returned my sandwich – I just wanted it cooked properly. But I can’t help but reflect on the different feeling I would have about McDonald’s right now, if that young lady had bothered to look me in the eye and simply say something like, “I’m sorry about that. If you pull around front, we will be happy to get you another one. And this time I promise we’ll cook it correctly.”

That would’ve made all the difference-just a simple bit of courtesy. It’s magic, especially in business transactions.

Customer Service is Crucial to Repeat Business and Profitiability

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=132166

Being a Customer is a Real Workout

(from Still Speaking Daily Devotional by Pr. Lillian Daniel)

There's a new gym and rec center in my town and they are trying to recruit members. So my neighbor brought my daughter and me along with her to try it out. Presuming the first visit was free, we arrived in our gym clothes ready to try a class, stopping at the front desk to check in. And let me admit it, we were running a little late.

First, the lady at the counter discovered that my neighbor had brought her daughter's membership card instead of her own. That took a few minutes to work out. Then she realized that we were guests and brought out multiple forms for us to fill out. Okay, I can understand paper work. But then she charged us $10 each and we had no cash. By now the class had started.

After paying by credit card because we had no cash, we made the mistake of grumbling that by now the class was half over. "Oh, you didn't tell me you were trying out a class," she said. "That will be another $6!" After settling up this next transaction, there seemed to be less paperwork to getting married than to trying out this gym for an hour.

At that point my daughter did the math and realized that we were about to spend $32 for a day, when a three-month trial membership was $90. "Can we just sign up for that instead?" she asked. So I asked if we could just go to the class first and then join for three months. She looked at us like we were insane. No, we had to join as members first. After ripping up the old forms and filling out all those new forms, she concluded, "Everything's official and now you can go to the class just as long as you have copies of your birth certificates." Like we keep those with us in our wallets.

By then the class was over, our tempers were hot and I felt like an absolute idiot for wasting all that time. I don't ever want to see that gym again. But here's the good news. All the rules had been followed.

Are You The Predator?

(from Ray Edwards Email Updates 7-22-10)

Maybe you’ve seen the new movie, Predators.

The plot is simple: humans find themselves on a planet that is a game preserve, and the humans are the prey. They’re being hunted by aliens for sport.

This is how most of us feel about marketers. We feel like we are the prey, and the marketers are the hunters. Merciless, weird hunters who are not really interested in our pain, our fear, or our lives.

That’s why people are drawn to marketers who actually care about the people they sell to. It’s why company’s with high standards of excellence, customer service, and integrity enjoy long-lived success.

From the marketer’s viewpoint, it look like this: it’s the difference between being a predator – or being the shepherd who protects and cares for the flock.

Which one are you? And if you don’t like the answer, here’s a follow-up question: which one will you be today?

Beverage Charges at Old Country Buffet, Country Buffet, Ryan's

A letter to Country Buffet/Old Country Buffet HQ:

I see that you are now charging for beverages at Old Country Buffet. Interesting that only a couple of years ago you were loudly advertising the fact that you DIDN'T do so when all your competitors did.

It's really disappointing when a retailer (that includes restaurants) attempts to resuscitate corporate profits by sticking it to their customers, especially in tough economic times such as what we're ALL experiencing today.

Instead of helping your customers through the down times, you focus on your bottom line and think only of how to squeeze a bit more cash from customers' wallets.

In terms of marketing that tactic seems rather foolish -- if people are scaling back on dining out, why would they come to OCB if they will be paying MORE for their meal?

We're all in survival mode, but some businesses handle it better than others. Had you any sense or understanding of the marketplace, you would surely realize that offering diners even a temporary price rollback or something extra as thanks for patronizing your restaurants when they should be eating at home to save money, would bring you many more customers and immeasurable good will.

I and my family will no longer be dining at OCB, although we had enjoyed doing so for many years. Along with the ridiculous price increase we saw the last time we visited, your now additional charge for beverages just priced you right our of our budget and more importantly, out of our desire to patronize any merchant who shows such disregard for its customers.

While our "boycott" of OCB won't make a bit of difference to your bottom line, I am certain others will come to the same conclusion we have. I hope that in the end, though you may not lose any money from having fewer customers (you'll make it up in those beverage charges) your image will be tarnished enough so that when people do have greater disposable income for dining out, they'll remember the policies you and other retailers initiated to prop up drooping revenues and patronize those who instead partnered with consumers to weather the storms together.

ONE Is All You Get!

I recently placed an ad for a client in a special section of a local newspaper. The quarter-page ad cost $365. The issue previous we had run a half-page ad, for $725.

When I requested a few extra copies of the most recent special section from our ad rep, so that our staff could include them in their presentation portfolios, she told me they "had not received many copies of the newspaper" so she could only give me ONE copy.

ONE copy! We spent $365 on an ad that we can only get ONE print copy of.

I guess this is all part of the cost-cutting measures being emo,oyed by the newspaper industry, which too late figured out it missed the digital train and are now trying to catch up on foot.

Or more like crutches, with service like this.

Who Cares?

[from Seth Godin's blog]
At the post office the other day, a guy wearing a beautiful handmade scarf finishes his transaction and starts away from the counter.

A small nail holding the molding apparently isn't hammered in all the way. It catches the scarf, pulls the threads and ruins the scarf. The man turns to the counter, looks at the postal worker who took his money and says, "There's a loose nail here, it just ruined my scarf."

Tim, the postal worker, beaten down, tired, given up, stands behind the counter and barely makes eye contact. "Oh."


When you allow (yes, allow) all humanity to be stripped from your day, all day, then what?

Price Tags

While I don't expect thrift stores (secondhand stores, Salavation Army, Goodwill, etc.) to provide Nordstrom-like customer service, a little common sense certainly seems in order.

My biggest beef is employees' complete lack of thought when it comes to placing price tags on merchandise, especially because those tags are usually designed to prevcent price switching (understandable) and therefore require a nuclear weapon to remove.

By placement I mean putting one of these to-the-end-of-time permanent price tags on the most visible/delicate/easily marred/conspicuous part of the item; i.e., book covers, the front of a picture frame, the side of a ceramic vase, directly on the cover of a rare newspaper or magazine etc.

Even worse: stores that use grease pencil or permanent, bold black markers, the ink of which can only be removed from glass, reserved primarily for fine fabrics and non-glossy paper.

It almost seems as if they knowingly, even painstakingly, mar the merchandise with pricing to make us "pay" for getting such a good deal or punish us for having to shop at a thrift store instead of paying full retail.

Let Me Out!

Today's customer non-service scenario comes from my local thrift store, which has installed metal gates at the exit door to be sure shoppers cannot take their carts out of the store.

Just trying to keep their costs down by not losing carts and having to pay someone to schlep out to the parking lot to round up the wayward metal, right?

Maybe so, but it presents a challenge to anyone purchasing more than a small bag of items, which many people do, especially when they have a half-price weekend sale. People purchase several large bags of clothing and toys and there's no way to carry them all by hand, so you have to leave someone to stand guard over the ones you can't carry while you go gt your car.

If you're shopping alone, you have to leave your bags right inside the store and make more than one trip to the car, or right outside and hope someone doesn't drive up to the cub and make off with your purchases.

I've tried going out the in door, but there's no handle on the inside (they thought of everything!) to pull the door open. And for elderly shoppers, it's even more of a hardship.

Poor Customer Service Costs Companies $83 Billion Annually

by Jack Loechner, Thursday, February 18, 2010, 8:15 AM

Genesys, with research firm Greenfield Online and Datamonitor/Ovum analysts, measuring the cost of poor customer service in the U.S., found that enterprises in the U.S. lose an estimated $83 billion each year due to defections and abandoned purchases as a direct result of a poor experience. Nearly two-thirds of consumers said they had ended a relationship due to customer service alone. The survey participants said that when they end a relationship, 61% of the time they take their business to a competitor. The $83 billion overall cost of poor customer service in the us came from: Business abandoned and lost to entire industry, $32.4 billion Customer churn and defections within industry, $50.6 billion Furthermore, the problem has become more complicated as customer interactions move beyond the contact center. According to numerous industry researchers, more than 90% of all transactions initiated over the Web are abandoned before any transaction is completed. And virtually no researchers have accurately measured the value of customer service across communication channels, says the report. Across 16 key economies (countries), the total loss for poor customer service  in US dollars is $338 billion annually or  the average value of each customer relationship lost to a competitor or abandoned of $243. In addition, 86.4% of consumers would welcome extended offers or help during self-service transactions. The biggest losers at the industry level are in cable & satellite TV, financial services, and consumer products. Nearly one quarter of consumers in the US said they abandoned a cable/satellite company in the past year, resulting in over $12 billion in lost revenue. And financial services companies suffered more than $10 billion of losses alone. Industries that were previously safe from competition, such as utilities in deregulated regions, are also feeling the pain, with $1.75 billion in lost revenue. In the U.S., 71% of consumers have ended a relationship due to a poor customer service experience, and the average U.S. customer surveyed had 11 interactions each year and ended 1.2 relationships. The average value of lost relationships in the U.S. is $289 per year. Younger consumers differ sharply from older consumers in their willingness to switch: Consumers aged 27-43 terminated relationships most frequently, at 1.52 times per year Consumers under age 26, at 1.43 times per year Ages 44-62 did so once per year Those over 63 years old did so 0.71 times per year Assisted service is well developed, with 78% of consumers saying their most satisfying experience occurred because of a capable and competent customer service representative. But self-service lags because it is not often intelligently integrated with assisted service. Consumers feel the most significant root causes of poor service are: Repeating themselves  Being trapped in automated self-service  Forced to wait too long for service  Representatives don't know my history and value  Cannot switch between communication channels easily 33% cite voice self-service  as the most challenging channel compared to only 1% who find it most satisfying. And 38% of consumers said it is critical to improve voice self-service to make it more intelligently integrated with human assisted service. Where they were trapped in an automated system, consumers spent, on average, more than 9.5 minutes trying to reach a human. When thinking of their most satisfying experience, consumers said competent service representatives played the largest role, while proactivity makes a significant difference. Consumers satisfaction is increased when four key needs are met: Competency Convenience Proactivity Personalization Consumers felt that companies had done much more to improve in the area of competency than any of the others.. The Most Significant Factors In Satisfying Customer Experiences (% of Respondents) Experience % of Respondents Wanting Competent customer service representatives 78% The communication channels were convenient 48% The company was proactive in reaching out to me 37% The transaction was personalized 38% Source: Genesys, October 2009 Consumers overwhelmingly said they would like more proactive outreach. More than 83% of consumers said they would find proactive engagement either a "strong benefit" or would "welcome proactive assistance" when they were stuck on the Web or in self-service. Consumer Views of Proactive Contact "No Thanks"   9.5% Strong plus   48.8% Welcome   41.7 In prioritizing improvements cross-channel conversations, consumers want companies to enable them to: Start in voice self-service and get assistance from an agent  Start on the Web and get voice assistance or chat from an agent  Receive an e-mail and then get assistance from a contact center  Schedule callbacks to avoid wait times  Add chat or instant messaging to Web interactions In conclusion, the report notes that poor customer service has a clear and immediate impact on a company, and the first step should be to understand and measure the direct business impact of customer service, and identify the gaps between the customer experience and expectations. (c) 2010 MediaPost Communications, 1140 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10001