Customer Service: 2009 Hall of Shame

Earlier, I have posted about Customer Service Hall of Shame survey in 2008. Recently, I found that 2009 survey results were released in June. Somehow, I missed the article that time, but nonetheless found it very interesting when I read it eventually. Providing an efficient and reliable Customer Service is of utmost importance to run a successful business. And surprisingly, so many companies fail to do so, again & again & again.

"How a company handles adversity can tell you a lot about its character. Does it stick to its guns, keeping the customer first? Or does it stick it to customers, raising prices and cutting service?

The recent economic turmoil has given companies a chance to prove their mettle. But many, particularly in the hard-hit financial-services industry, have failed to do so."

9 of these companies have featured in the top 10 listing of this survey in 2008. And despite their efforts to improve their customer service in reaction to such surveys, they still make it there. Now what is so challenging about improving customer service.

In my opinion, customer service is actually a very complex process to improve. Inherently, it is intangible and difficult to quantify issue. One can certainly weave a problem statement around "issue resolution time", "time of hold", "number of calls", "number of issues resolved in a certain amount of time", or what not. But the problem is that none of these measurements directly correlate to "customer satisfaction".

An efficient and great customer service is not just limited to "politely talking", "logging the issue", or "directing the call to a department". It is in fact, a function of a set of good communication skills, technical knowledge of product/service, an understanding of people's feelings, & the dynamics which come into play when an irate customer calls the customer service.

Cash for Clunkers

The recent "Cash for Clunkers" program from US government to augment the car sales was a great success, at least, for the auto companies which were craving for sales. Per the official website, www.cars.gov:

"The CARS program ended sales on the Monday night with nearly 700,000 clunkers taken off the roads, replaced by far more fuel efficient vehicles. Rebate applications worth $2.877 billion were submitted by the 8 p.m. deadline, under the $3 billion provided by Congress to run the program."

During this time, the auto dealers came up with some creative marketing strategies to allure the customers to buy automobiles from their piled up inventories and full lots. The Fuccillo Automotive Group in New York state is known for it's aggressive marketing and "It's Huge" campaign. One day got a mailer in my mailbox with a car key, followed by an invitation and offer number next day. It was pretty enticing offer, except for the fact that I was not looking to replace my 2007 Scion TC. But if I'd be driving a clunker, and spending an awful amount of money on gas, Fuccillo's marketing strategy would have certainly worked on me.

Coversational Capital: Lessons

As an Amazon Vine-Voice reviewer, I get an opportunity to review their products. Recently I read and reviewed Conversational Capital: How to Create Stuff People Love to Talk About. This was my first read on marketing and brand management. And it was certainly an interesting one too.

Key Take-Away: In order to be successful in today's competitive world, any product or service has to go beyond mere customer satisfaction. Designers, producers, manufactures have to keep the fact in mind that it is not the just the key attributes which matter, but rather it is the whole experience of using that product/service which matters to the customer. And it is this valuable experience which results in the best publicity for any product or service, i.e. the word-of-mouth publicity. It happens when your customers themselves become your brand ambassadors.

The experiential delightment which a customer gets from using your product or service. Authors have packed eight such "experience amplifiers" together and named them "Engines of Conversational Capital". These are more or less, the concepts which we already know, but packaged together and linked to each other. Citing examples from various brands and their marketing techniques, authors have done a good job in explaining their point.

1. Rituals
2. Exclusive Product Offering
3. Myths
4. Relevant Sensory Oddity (RSO)
5. Icons
6. Tribalism
7. Endorsement
8. Continuity

Examples of some successful brands through such word-of-mouth publicity: Apple iPhone, Cirque Du Soleil, IKEA, Hermon-Miller Aeron chair, Black AmEX card, Toyota Scion, Ben & Jerry, Nokia, and numerous others which are used in this book.

Overall, I would recommend reading this one to understand how the brands and their marketing folks try to entice us, the customers, towards their product.

Customer Service: Once Again

Last time, I wrote about Customer Service Hall of Shame. Just today, I read another interesting article on customer service. This one is the latest issue (10/08) of Quality Digest. Written as an open letter to the customer service departments of every company, this article addresses almost every experience, one can have while calling a generic customer service number (which usually starts with 1-800 or 1-866 etc) .

Really funny and very true...this letter is a must read. Below is the excerpt that I found hilarious.

"Sixth, I want to thank you for repeatedly reminding me that I probably could have found the answer to my question online at your incredibly complex and difficult-to-navigate web site. (I know this because, as any rational person would do, I checked your web site before calling.) In fact, during the 30 minutes I was on hold waiting to speak to your customer service representative, I am sure that your automated system told me that at least 7,000 times. Once would have been sufficient, as would the apologetic reminder that you value my business and you’re sorry to keep me waiting."

Click here to read the complete article. Feel free to share your stories with Customer Service.

Customer Service Hall of Shame

How many times have you heard the phrases like "Customer is the King", "Voice of Customer". "Customer Requirements" etc.? Every business, no amtter what size or industry, depends solely on its customers for its survival. There are scores of management books, articles and philosophies on how to improve customer satisfaction, how to drive customer requirements into internal processes, how to design product from customer requirements etc. etc There are also plenty of tools like QFD, VOC, Surveys etc. to achieve these goals.

But still there are businesses who make to the Customer Service Hall of Shame. This survey is done by MSN Money and was started in 2007. It's second list was released in May 2008 and the four winners from last year made it again in the list, 3 with even worse scores.

"That reality is borne out in the results of MSN Money's second annual Customer Service Hall of Shame, a ranking of companies with the worst customer service, based on a nationwide survey commissioned by MSN Money and conducted by Zogby International. The scores for our Hall of Shame companies are, on average, down from a year ago."

You can read the article here and post your experiences about these companies. I believe that their customer service executives must be reading these posts by now and working on to improve their reputation.

The complete list of rankings and methodology can be found at this link.

While going over this article and the rankings, I started thinking why are there so many unsatisfied customers for these businesses? Is there something to do with the sample of customers surveyed? The survey being an online survey only, the respondents will be mainly people who like to surf the web and use it for activities beyond email chat and videos. Now, the probability of someone responding to an online survey will be affected by the fact that whether that person had a bad experience with one of the companies in the list. People in general, tend to remember the negative experiences for a longer period of time than good or normal experiences. For example, if a person had to call 3 times to a company X and his issue doesn't get resolved in a timely manner or doesn't get resolved at all only once, he will be more likely to respond adversely for that company in a survey.

However, this article gave me an idea to generate some posts for this blog. I will start posting my own customer service experiences, whether good, bad or normal on this blog. I think it will be interesting to see the outcome.