The Six Dimensions of Customer Service

Do you really know what your customer service is for?

If you know what it is for, do you understand exactly what you should be doing to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver this to your customer?

Customer Service is a concept that is usually presented as a collection or patches of complementing activities done by an individual or a group of individuals.

It is seldom presented as a process or a system that an organization manages to seamlessly and effectively deliver solutions (product or service) to customers.

The conventional approach is to teach people to respond to customers using the telephone or handle a live person-to-person interaction especially when there is a dissatisfied or complaining customer.

The way I see it, you never have to resort to complaint management or scripted response to customers if you have done service delivery or created a truly satisfying product in the first place.

Most of the customer service programs are actually damage control or image protection ploys.

I am also a customer for many services and most of these customer service programs are really just cheap scams or are downright shameful tactics to evade doing additional after-sales commitments.

You never have to handle complaints if you avoid hiring callous and stupid people.

You never get callous and stupid people if you didn't promote a callous and stupid person to be a supervisor or department head who got this person in the first place. 

You never promote much less hire a callous and stupid person if you have a good recruitment policy.

Even if you did hire the right person, this person will not be able to function if you don't have a sensible service or product. 

They can't handle customers if you don't have a good process to allow them to get their job right. 

Your support staff won't be able to do his job right because he can't understand his job description (if you have one).

What I'm telling you is that all the components and dimensions making up your customer service program are tightly connected to each other. 

You need to understand that you will not be able to build a customer service program by simply training people or coming up with the process.

You need to tie all components or dimensions together. 

You must serve the right customer with the right product or service concept.

This concept must be supported by a seamless process and effective tools. This process must be managed and tools used by members of your staff having the right attitude and aptitude for the job.

You cannot maintain the right process, invest in the best tools or hire good people if you do not have a business plan that will make you viable.

You cannot have or make all of these dimensions happen or come at the right moment if you don't work as a team.

It took me more than five years to discern that most of the things I have done to build programs in support of customers seem to fall in a logical cluster of relationships and processes within the organization.

When I plan my approach to build a good customer service program, they all seem to fall almost always into six logical components or what I call dimensions.

I like to refer to it as dimension because it seems easier to perceive it if it is not seen as a logical sequence of events or time-specific evolution in an organization.

In my experience, you can literally deliver customer service in a box if you can build all these dimensions gradually and then tie them all together.

You can do it simultaneously or you may choose to work on one dimension at a time. It does not matter. 

What matters is that you must work on it with the intention of tying it together sometime, somehow.

All the things that you will do to build your customer service program will most likely be within the realm of the following dimensions: The Customer, The Service Concept, The Service Process, The Tools, The Business Plan, and The Team.

Indicators of Weak Customer Service Programs

I don't know if people who buy service or expensive products do this but ever since I started getting evaluated for customer service quality, I began to compare everything I do in customer service to every store or shop that I patronize.

I am very optimistic that those who are good at the basics of customer service will grow whether they like it or not.

Do you know why I truly believe this?

There is so much bad service out there that doing the basic things like courtesy, listening, and actually doing something for customers will look exceeding exceptional in the eyes of a customer.

Let's take a look at a great number of indicators to open your eyes on things you should NOT or NEVER do!

The customer is often or usually talking to the owner, supervisor or general manager regarding issues of service delivery that are basic or mundane better delegated to rank-and-file.

Customers who call by phone will not get ready answers to inquiries nor get issues resolved within minutes or will not be referred to the "right" person who can resolve the issue or respond to the inquiry.

Service agreements or terms and conditions of delivery are filled with clauses of what the customer cannot have or what the customer will do that will void the agreement or violate the terms & conditions of the service. Some of the terms and conditions I've seen in computer maintenance are so full of things that can't be done, the sales people were finding it hard to explain exactly what they will deliver.

Written communications related to customer issues are evasive and are normally written in a legal or lawyer's editorial style or tone. You may have heard of service companies who take their customers to expensive lunch meetings because that's the only thing they can really do right and which they don't deliver themselves.

Service personnel are overly cautious when responding to issues related to terms and conditions of delivery and will be non-committal when communicating with customers regarding action to be taken.

Personnel responding to customers are curt and seem to exhibit arrogance when requested to clarify issues or when interacting with customers. There are even truly obnoxious and rude characters who are just being arrogant as a ploy to hide a plain old fashion rip-off. These are genuine con artists who should be behind bars rather than behind the service counter.

Service personnel are not keeping records of tasks or are using forms (some don't even have them) that are either poorly designed, printed in so many copies or going through unnecessary layers of procedures that tend to frustrate customers rather than help them.

There simply is no system in place for the business to gather information or data about customers. The service people seem to have the habit of passing you to different people or offices in the guise of "escalation" without explaining why.

The people are just downright or simply sloppy exhibited by dirty work area, poorly groomed service personnel, inappropriate uniforms, bad layout of service area, poor communication skills, and apparent lack of training even in the most elementary procedures of phone handling or management of customer complaints.

Poorly labeled or misleading labels on products or services.

The business is simply selling products or service with a branding strategy that smells like a scam or rip off more than anything else.

Exaggerated and use of worn out claims in advertisements. If it's too good to be true, it's really too good to be true.

It takes so long for a walked-in customer to get prompt human contact or interaction from frontline staff. If you're standing in a reception area for five minutes without any staff acknowledging your presence, you're in there too long.

Had enough?

You should!

I had enough of bad service a long time ago!

I'll take you down a road where you never have to be the bad guy in Customer Service.

You might think that I have some secret or sophisticated technique behind all these customer service concepts but honestly, I don't.

What I have is an experience in the simple things in business and lots of common sense. I want you to read and read between the lines.

The best Customer Service managers are very good at the basics. 

You will too.

Nurturing Relationship with Customers in the Face of Global Uncertainty

The financial crisis that swept the US and sent tremors to most of the European Union is definitely one of many global uncertainties we hope we never have to face but unfortunately has now entered our front doors. 

There is no escaping this.

Those who are still in denial and have not planned contingencies will find themselves with a company with no more assets or working for another owner.

During the Asian crisis, the only thing we could do was prepare for the worse. 

I was working for an IT company providing maintenance services to computer network systems. 

We had to get down to the painful process of re-assessing what we really have in terms of receivables, projected sales, and current cash flows. 

Managing a marketing group at that time was so painful because I was there witnessing and causing a lot of good people to leave.

I trained these people and some may have to use what we have taught them somewhere else. 

The Asian crisis hit us at a time when most of our projections were already carved in stone. 

Dropping brands and replacing others was such an emotionally loaded process for some of my salespeople who have built their relationships and competence around a certain product brand.

Even before that crisis, I already knew that the only way we can assure constant profitability and sustainability was to nurture a critical mass of customers.

We have to do the math.

We have to calculate to a certain degree of confidence how much each of our customers was contributing to our annual revenues: which ones provided the highest margins and which ones were the least costly to serve.

It was a learning process for both Marketing and Technical Support teams learning that less than 20% of our more than 300 customers under contract yielded 80% of our revenue in the maintenance service category.

Maintenance services contribute 40% of our overall revenue every year.

It also contributes the most profit margin after the first year of the contract.

We ranked and grouped them in such a way that those who constitute 80% of our revenues were now assigned to the most dependable Account Executives.

No account executive was supposed to handle more than 10 of these accounts.

I handled the most difficult accounts (accounts with mission-critical servers).

It was a tedious process of looking into each of our accounts and doing the following:

• Updated their profiles.
• Determined the impact of the crisis on each of our customers (ability to acquire, expand, continue maintenance, recruit new people)
• Current products and services we have delivered and projected to be delivered to the customer
• Impact of the crisis on our own products and services and our ability to deliver them
• Impact on pending orders (delivery period, price, discounts, etc.)

It was a top priority to start doing courtesy visits instead of cutting down on the visits or customer calls.

In an economic crisis, sticking to the basics can force you to consider what you totally ignored in more complacent times--your existing customers.

You will start getting the most simple and elementary notes on customer service: Using basic customer service strategy for customer acquisition and retention.

Let's get back to basics about acknowledging who are your customers.

When identifying Customers in the Customer Service perspective, you are only looking at two (2) major kinds: Internal and External Customers.

People in your organization who need your products or services to get their jobs done are your Internal Customers.

On the other hand, people or organizations outside yours who require and buy your product or service to satisfy a need or solve a problem are your External Customers.

You need to know the distinction between the two for purposes of managing processes and measuring results.

Both require respective Customer satisfaction metrics in some way to measure the quality of service or product delivery.

Your concern for Internal Customers is cost-driven while for External Customers it is revenue and profit-margin-driven.

The approaches to communication and service delivery will be different.

The proximity of Internal Customers to you makes it relatively easy to deliver Internal Customer service.

External Customers however will require different media or channels to communicate to you.

You will have no way to determine where your External Customers are, physically and in mind, at any given moment to specifically trigger communication.

If you are working for a retailing organization selling microcomputers and their accessories and providing maintenance service, you will have Internal and External Customers.

Your Accounting Department may have people who will be using PCs that will need your maintenance service.

It will be quite odd to tell accounting to go call your competitor for the service you already have in-house.

Your External Customer may be a company, individual or any organization using PCs that may need your services.

The quality of the delivery and the constitution of "good" Customer Service is hinged on the expectations of that Customer and execution of service.

Beyond the measurable results, the quality of the service or product is really based on how close we are to meeting and satisfying customer expectations.

Customer Service: Dealing With An Upset Customer

The real test of your internal processes, people's competence, training and culture will be during a situation where a Customer actually makes known a complaint or a gripe.

Imagine a Customer as a kettle full of boiling water.

The growing sentiment of the Customer is the flame underneath the kettle. Picture the Customer's patience as the steam builds up inside the kettle.

Your approach to the Customer complaint is like your hand on the stove slowly turning the temperature between 30 degrees to 100 degrees Celsius.

You Are Dealing With A Human Being
Even the best products or services delivered by the most impeccable Customer service program will hit a snag in one way or another in a matter of time.

The human factor of any system will always be its weakest link.

Look, you are only human.

It could be your fault or the Customer's fault. The Customer is most certainly human too.

It doesn't matter.

In the end, it's the Customer's sentiment that will dictate the course of action.

The Tension First, Information Later
Obviously, the action to take if someone is about to blow up is to let off some pressurized steam.

Let the Customer do the talking.

This is where body language comes in.

You must maintain eye contact always. A nod to show affirmation and respond with an affirmative expression from time to time.

There's always this temptation to "label" customers or fall into stereotyping. Such a trap can be disabling if you are the very person who is supposed to find out more about the problem and take action later.

The frequently forgotten but important action is empathy.

Your Customer must feel that you understand his or her situation and how he or she feels about it.

Your attention, your facial expression, and your confirmation must all say that you do understand and you do care.

Now The Problem
Once you have confirmed with your Customer the situation, you must now initiate a proactive approach to solving the problem.

If you have a process that can be activated to resolve the issue then go ahead and explain how the process works.

If not, you may have to tell him again about his situation to confirm to him you have taken notes and you understood his narration.

Check the facts and refer the issue to the people who can take action or make a decision on the matter.

The Solution And The Action
If you and the Customer have agreed on what the facts and the issues are, it is now time to come to an agreement on the best action to take.

Confirm with the Customer how he wants the issue resolved. Present possible solutions or courses of action.

The Customer must confirm if the possible outcome of the solution or course of action is acceptable.

You need to be dependable and reliable. You must keep your promise.

Follow up and keep the Customer informed.

Make sure all the concerned parties are informed and updated.

Deliver.

If possible do more and exceed expectations.

Customer Service and Your Body Language

Your expensive brochures and advertisement can say a lot of great and cool things about your business, your products, your services, and how you do your business.

Themes and slogans show screaming words like

"We are the Expert",
"The Authority",
"We Care" or
"We are the Leader".

These advertisements are no doubt expensive.

The purpose of all these costs is to "pull" or "push" the Customers in. When the customer walks in and meets you or your people, one of the first things that will catch their attention is your body language.

Tactical interrogators in the military and intelligence services all over the world have used sophisticated techniques to read people's minds.

Even these experts admit that the most basic techniques are still largely contingent on how well the body is observed during direct interrogation.

Keep in mind three (3) things when the Customer has visual access to you:

· Posture,
· Facial Expression, and
· Eye Contact.

An upright posture can project self-confidence just as a slouching posture shows inferiority. Your body can show your Customer if you are sincerely interested in what he's saying or not.

Your face can deliver multiple messages with even the subtlest twitching. The most significant facial expression you can show is your smile.

The next most significant feature of your face is your eyes.

Customers appreciate it most if you look at them in the eye when you talk to them.

Most believe the eyes can show a lot of sincerity if it exists in a conversation.

Needless to say, you need to focus your eyes on the person you're talking to.

Your disposition with Customers may be discerned from how and where you look.

Another important "body language" that will get the customer's attention is a happy disposition.

It may be too presumptuous to say that a happy disposition can be acquired through training - this certainly takes time - but the best approach to get Customers to meet happy people in your organization is to get happy people during recruitment in the first place.

Happy people are more likely to internalize good posture, smile, and make eye contact.

They are also better able to handle customers when the going gets rough.

Customer Service: Knowing What Works and What Doesn't

There are no hard and fast rules in Customer Service, only best practices. Many have tried and experienced rewards for doing this right. There are best ways to do this and there are wrong ways.

Now, we learn what works and what doesn't!

What Works, What Doesn't!

Saying you don't know just won't hack it with Customers.

It's better to tell them you will find out or seek out the answers.

Don't tell Customers that it is not your job to even listen.

Tell the Customer you can help or find out yourself.

Don't do a hand-washing "that's not my fault" speech.

Tell the Customer what you can possibly do for him however insignificant this action may be to you. This also means that saying you can't do anything about the issue is a definite No-no.

A simple apology can calm a Customer down better than actually telling him to calm down.

Don't even use the old "I'm busy right now" excuse.

You might find out the hard way that people can really be very creative in finding "painful" and "nasty" ways to get your attention.

If the Customer writes a letter, respond with one.

Do give the Customer a call if he or she clearly indicates a phone number and a request for a call. Don't ever ignore a written request for assistance or complaint.

Most of the time, people who find time to write will find time to give another copy of the letter to someone who can take legal action.

Document Your Customer Interaction and Learn

Document all your interactions with Customers. You will find out that within a year, most Customer concerns can be addressed with a simple "Frequently Asked Questions" or FAQ brochures and pamphlets. This is the reason why websites are making FAQs a distinct page.

You can also use autoresponders to make a more uniform content but personalized approach.

Study this option and make it available to all your frontline people.

Clearly, we intend to delight our new Customers and make truly loyal friends with our present ones.

Being proactive and finding ways to help and satisfy customers rather than being passive will generally be a good yardstick of whether or not something is good for the Customer or not.

You can read these lessons and recite them well, but it is in truly putting these lessons in action can you really benefit from them.

If we truly practice what we learn, we tend to act them out of habit.

Actions can truly shout louder than words.

Our body language will show this to be true.

Customer Service: Developing The Good Habit

Customer Service is really the exercise of the most elementary rules in courtesy, respect, and people relationship.

It matters more in the day-to-day interaction with people.

Good Customer Service must not be developed solely as a process but a habit worth doing every day.


Knowing Who Is Your Real Boss: Your Customer

You must learn to classify your Customer as to the most important part of your job.

Your Customer pays for your services or products that solve problems for them. If they don't pay, you lose revenues.

No revenue, no paycheck.

It's very clear at the end of the day who The Boss really is.


Exceeding Expectations

The Customers of today are becoming more aware and critical of service quality.

As a result, organizations that deliver more than they promise tend to be remembered.

To delight customers, you, therefore, have to underpromise and over-deliver.

Not that you should hold back on telling the Customer what your business can do but more importantly meeting the Customers' expectations at the basic level, then giving more upon delivery.

Basic Customer expectations will vary from business to business but it is possible to formulate those expectations from industry practices and/or what you think should go into the delivery of your product or service to please customers.

In a market when almost all offerings look and sound identical, delivering more than the promise of or regular benefits to Customers creates stronger and more lasting impressions.

Going the extra mile for Customers can strengthen relationships.

When Customers are witness to your willingness to go the extra mile, they can sometimes even overlook occasional shortcomings.


Offer More and Better Options

If you have more options for customers, they are less likely to look somewhere else.

If their choices are better offered by existing alternatives, they are more likely to think only of you even if their initial decision may not be their final choice.

You should consistently evaluate the options you offer your Customers.

Each on their own must be a valid alternative given a certain set of expectations.


Keeping Your Promise

After you and the Customer have reached a point of agreement, you must be able to deliver the promise or the Customer's perceived benefits.

Always without exception, deliver your promise even if such promised benefit is a result of a compromise.

The idea of going the extra mile may not be appreciated by the Customer if you can't deliver the core benefits.


Be On-Time

When you meet Customers be on Time.

If you promise to call at a certain time, do it as promised.

If you are lucky enough to be given the order or job, deliver on time.

Certain products or services are critical components of a Customer's business process.

If they don't get these products or services on time, there will be consequences.

Be on time.


Express Empathy

Customers will find it easier to open up about their "needs" if frontline staff who interacts with them can relate with empathy.

It is even easier for them to give a hint of how the relationship should proceed if your staff can handle issues with empathy.

Empathy cannot be expressed in any other way except by being up close and personal.


Provide Channels of Communication

Your Customer must have several alternatives to reach you.

It is unfortunate that even the basic skills in handling telephone conversations are still absent in most frontline staff in sales and marketing.

Most organizations think that a 1-800 number offers comfort to Customers.

An incompetent person handling the Customer in the other line can spell a difference between a lasting relationship and a legal liability.

Provide them more than just a phone number.

Technology now offers alternatives: email, chat, forums, and mobile phones.


Develop a Happy Disposition and Working Environment

A happy disposition can be a very disarming picture even for an upset Customer.

It has more to do with culture than policy.

If the selection process tends to select a happy person, you can expect the working environment and relationships to be healthy and productive.

It is easy to encourage sales and service personnel to smile if the working environment allows it.

A happy disposition bridges culture and provides opportunities to establish rapport with Customers and nurturing a long-term relationship.


Co-workers Are Customers Too

Have you ever come across a scene where store supervisors treat frontline staff in a department store with little respect?

It is ironic that the same supervisors or the general management expect these same staff to treat their customers with courtesy.

The bottom line is that the concept of courtesy and customer service, in general, are more real to your frontline people if it is applied to them as if they were external Customers.

Co-workers are persons too, who deserve to be treated like Customers.

They are, after all, your Internal Customers.

There are no fast or hard rules in Customer Service, however, you must know the best practices based on other people's experiences and mistakes.

Learn what works, and what doesn't.

Customer Service: Your Customer's Expectations

You really have just about fifteen minutes to establish rapport if you approach a Customer in his office, and about less than that in seconds, after eye contact to establish rapport with a walk-in Customer.

In spite of this observation, almost all salespeople lose a Customer by consistently doing the initial contact wrong.

It's even worse in succeeding contacts.

If you have just anticipated what is the "conversation" going in the Customer's head before you saw him or before he walks into your store, you would have handled the initial contact right the first time.

You must understand at least the "raw" form of the Customer's expectations.

Read This!

A REAL-LIFE EXAMPLE.

One day in my past life, a director of our company started going around distributing a list of needs and emailing computer retailers of our requirements for a computer system which was supposed to be paid for by a grant from the Netherlands.

Everyone without exception did the initial contact wrong.

The first one called could not refer the director to the right person. The director got passed on to three more persons until the last person just told him the simple fact that the owner was not around to attend to her request.

Our director asked if the email address on their website is current. Nobody could even answer exactly what email address the director was talking about.

They don't even browse their own website.

Unbelievable.

One retailer that recently opened, did not do better.

With all the glitzy look of the facade and the showroom, the whole visual effect turned into a charade when three ladies in a booth in the middle of the showroom waited (for more than five minutes) for the director to ask them who was in charge.

One looked up and just went on reading something while the other two pretended she wasn't around.

By the way, this is one indicator of incompetence. Pretending the customer is not there.

The director was forced to ask the lady who looked up first, who can help her out.

She was probably irked that the director picked her among the three of them.

The director was beginning to guess they do this all the time to customers and are becoming highly adept at feeling "invisible customers" walking around the showroom.

The director picked one of the ladies and asked her who is in charge. It was then that the lady "realized" she was alive and actually talking, she pointed the director to a counter.

A technician told the director the person's name and told her to wait. A lady came out and was decent enough to make the list.

She actually called the director the same afternoon.

Another retailer requested the director to email her shopping list. She did email the long shopping list.

They did respond.

They quoted item one and that's it.

The director wondered if she actually sent anything to them since that was it: One item from a very long list.

No note or indication if they actually read the list or if she was really the intended recipient of the quote because the quote had somebody else's name on it.

At least the person who made the quote knows how to use email.

If this doesn't sound familiar, you either are not observing your people in action or you just missed the opportunity to see how badly your competitors are treating their own customers.

Either way, you lose because you are consistently driving away customers and you don't know why.

The painful thing is you are actually subsidizing this atrocity to customers by employing the people who is turning your customers to life-long enemies.

END OF REAL-LIFE EXAMPLE.

The Universal Application of Simple Courtesy

When our director walked into these retailers, the least she expected was courtesy followed by responsiveness.

All these retailers failed miserably in these most elementary criteria.

If you look at the advertisement of these retailers you will probably see these keywords in their flyers and brochures:

"Satisfaction Guaranteed",

"Customer First",

"You Are Number One!",

"The First in Customer Satisfaction"

All that hollow slogans.

The most ignorant of your Customers will no longer fall for that crap in your advertisement.

They probably pass through dozens of billboards screaming the same hollow slogans before they got to your store to pick up any impressions from your advertising materials.

What will make a lasting impression is what you or your people will do when he walks in.

Customer Expectations

Responsiveness. The least that your Customer will expect from you is responsiveness.

Do you or your people respond to Customers in a timely manner?

Excuse me but a grunt and a blank stare do not exactly fall under the category of response in Customer Service.

Confidence. If you or your people respond, Customers expect you to conduct yourselves confidently.

Customers "want" to find somebody they can lay their trust on.

Your confidence, especially your demonstrated confidence, will immediately build that trust.

Of course, your people must actually show they are competent and have knowledge in the specific or limited specialty the Customer is seeking.

Caring Attitude. Your organization must show that it cares by having people who actually exhibit a caring attitude towards Customers, serve Customers on a regular basis.

Your people can demonstrate they care if they implement support processes with empathy and respect for Customers.

Reliability. When you can respond and conduct yourself confidently with a caring attitude for Customers with consistency and effectiveness, Customers will naturally rely on you.

This reliance can easily translate to loyalty.

Isn't this the ultimate goal of Customer Service? Customer loyalty.

Physical Impressions. People generally have a perception that the way your surrounding looks reflect the organization's character.

They observe your office design and layout, your uniforms, your employees' demeanor, and the general look of the workplace.

It is also important to remember that your physical appearance as a person or as an organization will also, in a way, condition the Customer's conduct in your presence or his general attitude to your offering or organization.

Once you understand the "conversation" in your Customer's mind, you have made a significant step in approaching his comfort zone.

If you have an honest-to-goodness mechanism to appreciate the Customer's expectation, you now have to proceed to develop the habit of offering good Customer Service.

Customer Service Myth: Customer Service is for the Big Boys

Every time I have a casual talk with friends and even former clients about business, the conversation tends to drift towards the challenges of the markets and getting customers (or keeping them). Since customers are drivers of revenues in any business regardless of business models, quite naturally, it is a topic of interest to small business owners.

The usual concern is the question of costs and investment in any customer service initiative. The usual conclusion also is that the running costs and investments made on customer service make small enterprise owners perceive that customer service is the big boys’ game. My conclusion: It’s a Myth.

Most think that on average, interaction with the customer using sleek and expensive collaterals wins the day. There’s a tendency to spend on really expensive advertising and marketing materials to capture and keep customers. Unless you intend to be a national or global brand, small businesses can make do with the least expensive and often times more effective customer service programs.

Most enterprises (and I mean 60% of the enterprises existing today) will not grow to be national or global brands. You don’t need me for you to know this statistic. Just go to your local county or city and you will find out that a few businesses that register for their business permits will end up being a big brand five years after. What I am telling you is that “Customer Service” is not really exclusive for the big boys.

Customer Service is simply for enterprises or businesses who want to stay in the business of serving their customers. It doesn’t matter if it is a business with a 5,000 capitalization or a million dollars of capitalization, all businesses need customers and all customers want to be served in a manner they believe they deserve.

Think about this: All businesses have customers. The better they know them the better they can serve them. All businesses must understand how their products or services work or how it satisfies a customer's need.

Whether you’re an average guy or a genius, you will always end up adopting a process to make sure you deliver the product or service that satisfies your customer needs. Of course to deliver and consistently have the ability to deliver your products and services you need to have the right tools. You need technology and even the most mundane things like calculators and cash registers or a cheap communication tool like email.

Entrepreneurs or business owners may pride themselves on the ability to navigate around competition and the markets, but if you cannot afford risks it means you will have to plan. A business plan is important yet very few actually rely on a business plan to grow their business. Once you have confidence in your plan, you will need a team of very good people to run with the plan and make the business work.

Bottom line: Customer Service is not a complex or esoteric concept. It is just like any part of business made up of a manageable chunk of activities once organized can give you measurable and achievable results. I do believe that any business of whatever size will have to understand the six dimensions of customer service, namely: The Customer, The Service Concept, The Service Process, The Tools, The Business Plan, and The Team.
 

A Helpful Attitude Builds Relationships and More

There are people who are very easy to ask for help or assistance from. They always go to great lengths to be of help to a brother, a parent, a cousin, a classmate, an office mate, or even a complete stranger. It comes naturally to these people.

My mother is the greatest influence in my life about being helpful. She showed me by her own conduct and attitude towards people how it is to be helpful.

It simply came very easily for her to decide to help someone. I have seen this a dozen times. I saw how she helped a man get his wife out of the hospital after giving birth to their child. The man said he had nobody else to run to. The hospital will not release his wife because of unpaid bills.

My mother took a pen and paper, wrote something, and then just sent the man off to wait for her in the hospital. It was our family driver who told me later on that she paid the hospital bills and just sent our driver to give the receipt to the man. She can't even remember the man after.

Another case was about two girls with really dark skin and very curly hair. They came one morning to ask for leftovers because their mother left them for about a week with no food. Their mother never came back.

I can't forget it because she did not give last night's leftovers. She asked them to sit around our garden table. She took my spaghetti (My Spaghetti) she prepared for my breakfast and served it to the two girls with hot chocolate. She just smiled and told me there's always a loaf of bread on the table for me.

These girls not only lost food, their mother just left them. Of course, I was ok with a loaf of bread. Actually, I just got two slices. My mother packed the loaf of bread and a bottle of peanut butter (my brother's favorite peanut butter) and gave it to the two girls.

It's cool. I can always get two slices of bread from the table...I know.

Being helpful is not something you get after a seminar. Knowing how to write a sales letter, maybe something you can get from a seminar. Building a website is something you can learn from a seminar. Baking a cake is something you get from a seminar. A helpful attitude is simply not a thing you pull out of a kit in a seminar. A helpful attitude has something to do with character.

I always like working with customer service, technical support, or even marketing people with an attitude of being helpful. It's always easy working with them even for long hours.

When you work for a company that provides maintenance service for large computer systems, you must be able to respond to a customer call any way you can. What if, the caller is not your customer?

A call coming in on a Friday one summer was made by someone asking help in trying to print a report in WordPerfect. I used to do a lot of writing in WordPerfect back then and then switch to PageMaker and then to Microsoft Word.

I was always the last to leave as usual. While everyone was rushing to the door to go home (it was already 5:00 PM), I was holding this phone listening to a desperate female voice.

I can't recall her name anymore but let's call her Beth. Beth called two of their suppliers who provided them their computers. She was told to call tomorrow morning because nobody is in technical support (Of course, it was already 5:00 PM.). 

To get the help she called all the business names in the phone book under computers. Fortunately for her, there was only less than ten of us on the page. To make the long story short, I work for a company listed close to the end of the page of the phone book.

Receiving the call I immediately switch to our standard response protocols. Asking the identity of the caller and the company, verifying if they are currently enrolled in our service, and blah blah blah. She was not our customer and her company is not listed in our maintenance support program.

The usual response to this is to go into a prepared script. It was meant to get her interested in our maintenance services. I felt the desperation in her voice. I felt that she was not in the listening mode right then. I simply switched to my listening mode. I just let her talk about her predicament.

Beth called because her boss who is the Vice President of Finance for their company has prepared some financial data in QuattroPro and wants to integrate the spreadsheets in the report written in WordPerfect. At that time only WordPerfect can do this without any conversion being done with QuattroPro spreadsheets. 

The report is supposed to be submitted and presented first thing in the morning. His boss is relying on her to finish the report that same night to give her boss time to review it before he goes home.

I walked her through the process of how to paste the spreadsheets in QuattroPro onto the WordPerfect document. There were so much data representing many tables to be pasted on the WordPerfect document. After she completed the task she requested that I stay on the line while his boss is reviewing the report she printed.

I told her that I will hang up and wait for her call. I promised her I won't go home until she tells me that the report is okay.

Of course, more requests came after I hang up, like how to create charts, how to paste the charts into WordPerfect, and how to insert charts into Harvard Graphics. At that time Harvard Graphics was a choice for presentations, not Microsoft PowerPoint. Eventually, Beth did finish the report that night.

I hang up and forgot about Beth and the call.

Several weeks after, my account executive comes to me and says: "Boss, remember that account we were trying to pursue for many months for our computer maintenance contract. Someone just called and requested the maintenance contract.

I haven't been approaching that client because the Vice President for Finance was giving us a hard time about our service fees. The  Vice President said were higher than the other suppliers."

When I asked my account executive what brought about the sudden change of heart, he told me about the story of the Administrative Assistant working for the Vice President of Finance.

Apparently, our proposals like all the other proposals submitted to the company were all expensive. They were more or less of the same price levels. Finance has to decide on one eventually. The Vice President asked his Administrative Assistant which one she will choose.

She chose us! 

The reason she gave was that somebody from the company helped her solve a technical problem even though she was not even a customer yet. Her logic was that if she can get help even if she's not a customer yet, how much more if she had a maintenance contract.

My account executive was thinking of sending her something to thank her but can't remember her name. I said, "Let me guess--Her name is Beth".

His eyes brightened and asked me how I knew?

I simply said, his "girl story" sounds like a Beth.

Technical Support is More Than Just Technical

When you get that call from a customer about technical support, what comes to your mind? What conversation will be running in your head? Most of the time, what comes to your head are procedures, techniques, and the step-by-step processes of resolving a technical issue by the book. I know. I did most of these things all the time.

There is also a lesson I learned about responding to a customer call. The lesson is: Not all calls for technical support are actually technical.

There were two identically configured servers serving a company manufacturing slippers for export. One December day it just refuse to make identical copies of their database into each other's hard disk as it is supposed to. The call came in a few days before Christmas. I always get these calls a few days before Christmas.

The company cannot afford not to have their servers back up each other's database because they are supposed to shut down the servers on Christmas Day for maintenance. The backup ensures business continuity after the Christmas season. The main office in Japan will be cut off from their manufacturing plant completely without the servers.

The company adopts a "Just in Time" manufacturing scheme which makes real-time connection critical to the manufacturing division. Added to this is the fact that the new design of their system is just one of only three in the whole Asia region. This means it's been tried only three times. There are no precedents yet of a downed server under this design. There are no ready answers if these servers crash. There are no references. There are no manuals to help us out once a crisis unfolds.

Our customer's representative naturally is the Manager for Management Information Systems. She was the one who recommended the system, the service provider of the database management system, and of course the hardware (from us). She put her reputation on the line in putting the system in place, now it is about to fail not just her department and company but her personally.

The provider of the software and database system also arrived on the same day. They were the first to be informed of the problem. We were all in a huddle: the MIS team of the customer, software provider, and us the hardware provider.

We knew that if the system will not be up by Christmas, top management will be looking for answers and eventually someone who will provide the answers for the fiasco. We did not need to hear from her who that someone will be because she knows the bucks stop at her doorstep.

I pulled out every piece of information about our hardware including references to the same installation in other countries. It was functioning as it should. Our contacts from systems design and software development were not very sure if they can work around the software and the database.

There was no technical reference to find out what exactly was happening to the software but there was also no reference that the problem is supposed to happen. In this industry, if the problem did not happen yet, it will not be in the manual. The software provider has not encountered the technical problem themselves. We were in a situation where we had no answers.

I was no longer concerned about the technical issue, I was concerned about her, the MIS Manager who trusted us. We are about to fail her. Technically, we can always blame the software but it does not help our customer, the MIS Manager. She will still be responsible if the system crashes due to a faulty systems design. We have to give her confidence again not in the design or the system but confidence in us.

As soon as I got a chance to talk to our own Business Systems Manager who also is our most experienced systems engineer, I confirmed that there was no way to go around the problem based on the existing design. The system will not be online as long as we start up the system using the existing design.

The problem shifted from tweaking with the design to simply getting the system up by Christmas. My solution was to let the database management system run on a single server but to do that we have to roll in hardware with a lot higher configuration and possibly a server from a different brand because it was available.

This server will be available within 24-hours. The alternative was to get it via Hongkong or Singapore which will take weeks. We have only several days before Christmas.

I was now asking our Business Systems Manager to stick his head out together with mine. I was recommending a course of action out of the books and totally against our protocols. We were recommending a solution that was not in our procedure plus I was about to recommend a brand replacement which was against marketing policy. Of course, I got a call from our CEO himself a few hours after they got wind of what we were about to do.

The position I shared with my CEO was to choose between the protection of a brand or the retention of a customer. My boss of course responded by giving me the classic "chicken and egg" logic. If we lose the brand we have nothing to sell, if we lose the customer we have nobody to sell to.

My response was, I can always reposition the same brand with the customer but we can not reposition customers in the greater scheme of our marketing strategy once we have lost them. Besides, if we lose the confidence of our customers, especially this particular customer, it does not really matter what brand we carry. The customer will have nothing to do with us after this crisis.

We knew we could pull off technically the solution we had in mind, but we need also to act on our customer's fear. The fear of failure in the eyes of her superiors. The MIS Manager was up for more than 24 hours already.

We were also going to be up almost twenty hours if she does not go home and leave the factory. The lack of sleep was increasing her anxiety and stress. It was difficult talking to her. She had no breakfast when we met her that morning. It was a good thing we brought along food for her and her team.

Looking back this is what we did:

We did our homework - Research, research, research
We immediately formed a research team of two (2) people who will research both software and hardware issues of the problem using the most specific information we got about the design of the system.

Since we always have a profile of our customers right down to their favorite dessert, it was easy for us to know what will immediately cheer up our MIS Manager. Sweet food and in that very specific situation a bit of protein (burgers) and hot drink (coffee). Food can always calm people down.

Another thing I learned is that people are easier to talk to if they are munching burgers or doughnuts with steaming hot coffee. You think this is insignificant, try talking to someone who is hungry and without sleep for twenty-four hours about a problem she thinks you have caused. I have not read about this approach in any customer or sales manual but it always worked for me for many years.

Informed Top Management - Yours and Your Customer
After we have the facts straight from a direct interview of the customer and our research, we prepared a brief background of the issue, what we are currently doing to resolve the technical issue, and sent it via email to our superiors.

In the case of our customer, we have to ask the permission of the MIS Manager when to start informing her superiors, who will do the disclosure, how to deliver the information and how much detail to disclose. It has to be her call because she has a lot more at stake.

Our own CEO however was already advised of the pertinent perspectives of the issues in the event our customer's superior starts calling. The main objective was to keep things in perspective and to keep stakeholders calm since there is no crisis to speak of yet.

Get the Blessing of Top Management
We informed our superiors of what we intended to do. I had no choice. I was asking them to roll in an asset worth thousands of dollars just as a stand-in solution. It was not a sale. There were no margins to speak of. It was just a plain and simple first-aid solution to help a customer. Only the blessing of top management can get the wheels rolling towards resolving the issue. An expensive one at that.

Get Other Stakeholders in ASAP
Finding the right hardware specification was just one part of the solution. The other part is the software that runs the database. Although we can handle the technical aspect of the hardware design, we still need to talk to the software guys to make the whole system work.

We also need to talk to the MIS team of the customer to understand how the database is supposed to work for the company. All of them need to hear the plan because each of them has technical capabilities to execute different aspects of the plan.

Form a Unified Plan
Each team has a role to play but roles only work if it moves under a cohesive plan of action. You can learn how to come up with a great plan or you can learn it as you go but make one. Get all the stakeholders and put the plan together. More importantly, execute.

I said a lot of things that really only boils down to a simple thing: Not all technical issues call for technical solutions. What seems to be a technical issue may just require some form of human understanding and discernment and acting on them.

Why Do We Always Do The Basic Things Wrong?

While helping do an inventory of computer accessories and electronic gadgets in a retailing outfit, I can't help but ask the people manning the store how they keep track of their customers.

Guess what? They don't!

They don't keep track of where they are getting their sales: What product and who buys them? The last time I was in retailing was in 1998 selling the very exact things but I carried more than 50 brands with the likes of Seagate, IBM, Hayes, Microsoft, Lotus, Creative Labs, Intel, AMD, and a lot more.

I can't believe that in 2008, retailers are still doing a lot of things wrong. Well not exactly wrong, but they don't do the most basic things at all (at least to get the sales consistently coming).

Back when I was managing retailing operations more than 50% of our sales were from more than 30% of our repeat customers. Customers who buy more than two items or have bought the second time will always end up in our database together with information about what hardware or software they already have at home and at the office (in this order).

Eliciting this "basic" information from customers has been integrated into the "script" of counter sales associates so that even if we don't get a sale we always have at least 5 to 10 new names in our database on that day.

Basic sales training will tell you that it is harder to get a new customer than encouraging repeat sales from an old customer but most retailing organizations ignore this. It is amazing. 9 out of 10 counter sales personnel will not initiate on their own a sales campaign for existing customers and more than half of retailing (especially small businesses) do not have such a campaign as a matter of policy.

If you want to test this, just walk into a computer store or even a hobby shop. You will most likely leave the store without the store clerk ever asking you about what you already have or how to get in touch with you about what you may need in the future.

Don't ask me if I tried it. I bought books, a new TV, a DVD player, a video game player, DVD rewritable discs, a headphone set, 2 pairs of shoes, a file box, a knapsack, a LED flashlight, binders, and more since January of this year and not a single salesperson or clerk ever ask me anything.

You don't really need much to get basic information from your customers. I designed a form that can be printed on letter-size paper (four forms on one side). The form keeps the information about the customer's full name, phone, email, address (if you're lucky because some are not just concerned about security they just find filling up forms tedious like me) or even mobile phone numbers.

To encourage them to give information, I usually tell them that they get to be invited to free seminars sponsored by our partners and on some special occasions I get to give them freebies from our partners.

I also created a Microsoft Excel template to compile all of this information so that later on I can easily integrate that into mail merge or even a fax campaign template.

If you really keep track after a year, you will be amazed at the pattern that will be seen after collating all the information including sales from each of your customers. You can even predict which week in a month they will most likely order again their supplies (I used to sell printer paper and ink).

I like to hear the expression "You called me just in time!" from customers every time my telemarketers make their daily calls.

In my next blog, I will show how a simple graph in Microsoft Excel helps me advise a friend not to close shop just because customer traffic is not consistent in their new store location in the same shopping mall.

Gung Ho and Leadership

The book "Gung Ho!" by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles is a must reading for those who would like to turn things around in an organization that either has lost its way or lost its steam. For many, this could be an eye-opener but for some who have been in the trenches of developing organizations and driving them to take the challenges of evolving, much of the teachings in “Gung Ho!” would be a given.

“Gung Ho!” teaches about the Lesson of the Squirrel: Worthwhile Work. People must understand that their work is important in the greater scheme of things. People in our organization must share this understanding and the goals that must be achieved. Our understanding and our shared goals must be ingrained in our values or are sustained by our values.

The second lesson of “Gung Ho!” is the "Lesson of the Beaver": In Control of Achieving the Goal. The book defines the elements of control as the ability to understand and know the realm within which you can act, to have a full appreciation of every person in the organization, and to challenge and stretch the boundaries of uncharted possibilities within the capacity of the people who will pursue the goals.

“Gung Ho!” closes with the third lesson: The "Lesson of the Goose": Cheering Each Other On. Cheering each other means congratulations should be true whether active or passive. We must cheer or excite people to go on not just in the end but the whole stretch or process of achieving results.

You get a variation of all of these lessons in management classics like "In Search of Excellence" by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., followed by "A Passion for Excellence" by Thomas J. Peters and Nancy Austin, "Theory Z" of Professor William Ouchi of Harvard, "Mission Possible" by Ken Blanchard and Terry Woghorn and even from the more recent "Direct from Dell" written by Michael Dell himself of Dell Computer Corporation.

The one thing that “Gung Ho!“ does not openly teach but is skirting or is swimming around in the book is the key that binds all three lessons. The key that ensures the three lessons are understood and lived by. The key is leadership.

The individual character that grows from these lessons must be embodied in a person. It must be perceived in and lived by the one person who will demonstrate that these lessons are real and achievable. That person is the leader.

There are many shades of leadership you may have witnessed and read about but the most common for me in my experience for the last 20 years seem to fall in different colors of grey in two personalities: The Boss and The Politician.

The Boss is the control freak: Always scared of losing control, always putting people down, always making everyone feel inadequate, always in on things however trivial or mundane, always the chairman of something, the only one who can do it, never delegates, all-knowing, the only one who can approve, only one who will be there, only one who is first, only one who is last, hates the young potential heir to the throne, the self-appointed expert of everything or the Only One of almost anything.

The Politician is the other side of The Boss: Always pleasing everyone, cannot make up his own mind, always seem to be doing something about nothing, always find someone to blame for anything, has always the right reason why it isn't him when things are bad, always find a good reason why it is him when things are good, wants to be boss but does not want to be accountable, the regular court jester, always congratulating but always scheming to get you out of the way, very good at teaching "Gung Ho!" but don't know where to start, always starting something but never finishing, finishing something but does not remember why he started it, or he is simply the common variety "wimp" in an executive suit.

We need leaders who are generative. We need leaders who bring out the best in us. The most memorable interaction with leaders that defined who I am is not really the most astounding but they are indeed profound. These leaders are not the kind we see in the limelight and they seldom are. These leaders make us realize without trying who we can be or what we can be. Their mere presence calms us and assures us that things will be better.

We should seek out the leaders among us. Bring them out and follow them. Better yet, let us seek out the leader within ourselves let it define the rest of who we are. Let that leader bring us into the light allowing us to discern the best in us that has always been there.

Gung Ho, friends!