Looking out my window today ( no, not like this picture, but bad enough) gave me the idea for this post and it will be pretty short. Plus it applies to more than customer service and customer support.

Here goes...

First of all, if you haven't got a Disaster Recovery Plan in place, I would rather you go to the links I am going to give you and get started ASAP!

Second, all three of these sites carry a wealth of information about the subject, including why you need to do this.

Third, if you have already had a disaster and are wondering what to do next time (and don't think there won't be a next time!), these sites will help you figure out what to do better this time.

The first site is Continuity Central, a clearinghouse for information about disaster planning, recovery, and business continuity. It includes information for everyone from rank beginners to people looking for certification in disaster recovery.

This next site has an article letting us know that September is National Preparedness Month. It is on the site of the Disaster Recovery Journal, another great repository of knowledge about this topic. Obviously, this is a huge need in the business community.....it has its own journal!

This third one is from CSO Online and has a list of FAQs to answer many of the basic questions you may have about such an ordeal.

Does anyone have other suggestions we can publish? If you have been through such a mess, like flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, fire, or other bad luck, please feel free to use this blog post as a soap box and relate your story. Let people know that "Yes, it can happen to the best of us! And here is what we did about it."

School is definitely back in session. 

The groan of uncooperative children getting out of bed in at 6 a.m. is audible for miles…at least it’s that way around where I live…while the teachers guzzle down a gallon of Folgers’s (with or without creamer) gearing up to take on a hundred plus uninterested kiddies and a few contrary parents who are dissatisfied with the teachers’ performance in the classroom.

I hate to admit it but in a number of my classes I, too, was one of those uninterested students—who wasn’t?  But even now as I look back, all my teachers are teaching me a couple of unexpected lessons—how to sell an idea to potential customers and how to apply customer service.  As strange as it sounds, it’s true.

Teachers have to pitch their lessons to grab their students’ attention and then maintain it throughout the class period.  I asked a teacher once how she did that and she told me that it’s a matter of incorporating the students’ interests.  Don’t we do that in business? 

Customers want freedom of choice, flexibility (especially when it comes to time), and convenience so we offer them online self-service centers, online knowledge bases, Q&A sections with forums, etc.  While incorporating those interests, we also educate them on what our companies do and what more we can offer them. 

Now, there will always be a hitch sometime, somewhere and a customer will send in a complaint like an angry parent.
    
Again, take a lesson out of the parent/teacher conference playbook. 

• Respond calmly and professionally. 
• Let the individual vent their frustration. 
• Acknowledge that you understand that they are upset and let them know that you want to fix the issue. 
• Then come up with a plan of action to fix the problem. 
• Make sure you include the customer in the process. 
• Give them a chance to voice their opinion on how they would fix it. 

As I said earlier, it’s a little crazy how teachers are the perfect sales and customer service reps.  They do it every day,often under more stressful conditions and sometimes for far less pay. 

So, while you find an unexpected lesson in business from educators, make sure you thank a teacher and get PhaseWare’s customer service software to implement the lesson learned.

Most people think calling a utility company about their bill is about the worst waste of time ever, bar none. But Oncor has somehow made it, if not a joy, then less about the billing and animosity.

The Dallas Morning News reported that Oncor, an electric delivery company, expected calls to increase exponentially when a seemingly never-ending spate of 100 degree days pretty much guaranteed a spike in energy use and bills.

Expecting a lot of hot-tempered calls, Oncor was pleasantly surprised to instead receive many calls about ways to reduce bills in the future (how about that? customers understanding that hot weather leads to higher electricity bills!).

Brenda Jackson, Chief Customer Officer  for Oncor Electric Delivery Co., puts it all down to Oncor's customer-first focus.

• Call centers are staffed by "Texans who speak Texan"
• If customers are "confused about which company does what" in the electricity generation and delivery schema, they are encouraged to call Oncor, who will help them sort it out.
• Issues brought forward by customers are not allowed to drop

Oncor recognized that it had abdicated its relationship with its customers to energy retailers who, unfortunately, couldn't always answer customers' questions. In order to rectify that situation, Brenda Jackson was given a C-level position with the power to keep the focus on the customer and to urge transparency in Oncor's dealings with them.

She pushed offering apologies for trangressions, not excuses; working to restore customer confidence about the new SmartMeters; and getting to know the local business community. She always asks the rest of the team "What can we do better [for the customer]?

Ms. Jackson acknowledges that she may be an aggravation to some of her colleagues, but her results show that it has been worth the work.

Now...if an electical utility can make these kinds of strides in customer service, so can we all.

This article is cross-posted to our second blog:

The Successful CXO: Committed to Customer Service

Customer Relationship Management can be problematic. 

Some business owners lean to one side of the extreme by saying that technology takes away that special human touch that customers crave. So using technology is a mistake for customer service and relationship management. 

Then there are others who think that technology is all you need because customers value convenience over personal touches (i.e. Wal-Mart versus farmers market). 

I guess it is just human nature to lean towards the extreme in an attempt to make a situation simpler.  However, we would all be wise to heed the saying, “Everything in moderation.”  There is a happy medium, even when combining personal touches and technology.

Technology is a great tool for speeding up the process of correcting problems.  It makes reporting issues far more convenient for customers because they can do it at any time, day or night.  Agents can pull up client information at a moment’s notice.  In order to add a personal touch, the agent in charge of dealing with a certain incident ticket should contact the customer who reported it and let him know that they are looking into the problem and update him on the progress. 

Communication is key when maintaining any kind of relationship.

PhaseWare’s Self-Service Center, Live Chat, and Event Engine software packages provide methods of personal touches through technology. 

With the Self-Service Center, customers can log in and see who is actually working on their incident ticket so they have a name in hand which lets them know that their complaint is not just floating somewhere out in the ether.  There is a connection to an actual person. 

With Live Chat, customers can actually chat online with agents about various issues and get a game plan as to how the problem will be solved.  It is a person to person conversation—a personal touch through technology. 

Event Engine also maintains that personal touch by keeping the customer in the loop.  It sends out periodic e-mails to keep the client updated on the resolution progress. 

As a customer myself, it is nice when a company touches base with me to let me know how things are proceeding if I have recently sent in a complaint.  Something else that is also welcomed is when someone touches base two or three weeks later to ask how whatever they fixed was holding up and if anything needed to be tweaked.  I actually had this happen recently and it was a good feeling, like the company cared about how they were doing and were making sure that their clientele were happy with the company’s products and service. 

By the way, that company contacted me via e-mail, not phone.  I didn’t need to hear a voice to know that the company was trying show that they cared.
    
Personal touches don’t have to be huge.  Personal touches are simply the little things that show that the company is taking the time to go the extra mile, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Just recently, I started considering how much time I spent on my computer, and particularly how much time I spent reading and composing e-mails.  I look at my e-mail in the morning, multiple times through the day, even at night.  Some of the e-mail is personal but quite a bit of it is for business.

And then it hit me—so much of what is customer service happens long before we ever see the customer’s face. It comes in the form of e-mails, newsletters, blogs, and so many other ways.  We emphasize our training and conduct concerning what we do and say when we are face-to-face with the customer. Both are extremely important, but we rarely think about what we say and how we say it when we write.

Follow the same rules and guidelines as if you were face to face with the customer.  Be polite, be courteous, and be thoughtful.  However, with the written word, you have to be a bit more careful and more aware of how you say something.  When you are face to face with the customer, they can hear your tone and read your body language but in the written word, the customer does not have your vocal tone to go by.  Intentions can be easily misinterpreted so be aware of your word choices.

Be aware of grammar and punctuation.  When speaking, it is generally acceptable to use colloquialisms, but when writing a business e-mail to a customer or sending out a mass newsletter, you cannot write like you speak.  You have to remember all those grammar rules you learned back in the sixth grade, not to mention all the punctuation rules.  When you speak, little apostrophes and commas don’t come flooding out of your mouth in the middle of your sentences; but if they are missing in your writing, the customer will notice your mistakes and you will seem unprofessional if they spot mistakes on a regular basis.

With those rules said, how do you prevent trouble in the written word?  Find a great editor.  Do not send an e-mail or a newsletter that has not been reviewed multiple times by you, yourself, and by someone else (when possible).  If you are sending a newsletter, you will need several editors to look through the draft to ensure perfection.

My grandmother always used to say that sticks and stones could break my bones but words could never hurt me—such an untrue statement.  Words leave a lasting impression. 

Make sure the impression your words leave is a good one.

Aligning channels with operations ensures that compliance requirements are met.  There may be requirements for encrypted data, secure data transmission according to standards, and building audit trails among other things. Keep in mind that not all types of processes work well for all channels. For example, chat generally does not work well with manual processes requiring a wait-time such as research or the need for a specialized agent.

Self-service channels require access to a searchable knowledge base that will provide consistent information from any touch-point. Inconsistent information causes customers to distrust the automated channels, and they then will contact a more expensive, higher touch channel. This increases operational costs and decreases savings for the support center.

If the self-service channel is not operated by customer service, customer service leadership must create a pathway to notify the self-service manager about usage problems so root cause analysis and reduction of calls can be pursued. However, this type of arrangement introduces a bottleneck which will increase the probability of a service failure.

Infrastructure requirements must be broad enough to include future expansion and changes. Planning for the immediate needs only will result in costly and less-workable changes for future channels. A typical order of implementation is:

1. Voice
2. Email
3. Self-Service
4. Agent Knowledgebase
5. Chat

Note: Knowledge Centered Support Best Practice - Deploy all knowledge internally before using it in self-service to improve the information and its presentation.

Again: to avoid inconsistencies, a unified database or knowledgebase should be available for access by all channels. However, the knowledge must be formatted for each channel. Chat will require a more abbreviated form than email.

Other infrastructure requirements include creating access to back office information needed for interactions:

• Access for agents
• Integration with channels
• Knowledgebase, ordering, and filling systems
• Accounting database
• A unified agent desktop with the ability to aggregate the data in real time from multiple sources

Once the infrastructure is in place, a plan must be made for continuous improvement:

• Constant benchmarking and analysis to meet customer needs, deliver productivity and cost-efficiency improvements
• Performance analysis for each channel to find trends, gaps in delivery, quality, efficiency
• Channel specific metrics (example: real-time monitoring of email, average handle time for chat)[1]

[1] Guidelines for a Successful Multichannel Service Strategy. KANA, October 2008.

In the spirit of trying to wake up the brain after summer vacation is over, here are a few articles to peruse, some of which actually have to do with customer service.

How Our Brains Make Memories

So that's why I forget to....forget to....I forgot. Whatever.

The Culture of Being Rude

Hmmmm...Maybe that could explain that customer service rep...or the customer.

Much as you might like to:

Don't Kill the Customer - Manage Your Emotions

The Pygmalion Effect in Customer Service

Living up or down to expectations

Your Corporate Culture's "Artifacts" - What Would Indiana Jones Say?

"Why does it always have to be snakes?"

There are several steps to determining the order channels should be added as well as planning the needed infrastructure changes to support each channel. As mentioned in an earlier post, the best bet for first implementation is the one the customer wants most that also answers a business need.

Mapping channels to customers offers insights into channel preferences and the type of support preferred for each channel. Studies have shown customers choose channels based on accessibility and the nature of the inquiry. While there are some generational differences in channel choice, the process of preference analysis will likely determine which channels work best for a particular business.

In addition to customer preference, an organization may wish to further map channels according to the value of the customer. A word of caution: if customers are mapped according to value, it is imperative to keep the difference as unnoticeable as possible so lower value customers do not perceive a lesser experience.

One scenario is to offer multiple channels with a tiered service strategy. The higher cost channels, such as phone and chat, are reserved for high value customers while lower value customers are limited to self-service and email.

A second scenario is to immediately route high value customers to more highly experienced staff and to offer them more extensive and tighter SLAs while lower value customers must wait in queue longer and be more frequently connected with less experienced staff.

Mapping channels to the business provides insight into the best channels for the specific type of inquiries received and best fit for current customer support operations, available staffing, and budgeting restraints. The channel that best matches both requirements receives first priority for implementation. When assigning channels, time sensitivity must be considered. Urgent inquires need real time channels for best service.

The following are some common channel distributions for various inquiry types:

Which channel would you say your customers prefer when requiring support? Leave a comment and stay tuned for Part 2 next week.

Great news has arrived this week—no more oil is leaking in the Gulf!  Not only is there no leakage, but the reports coming in are saying that the coastline is clean.  However, look at those beaches—nobody is there.  The only sound on those shores is that of waves flowing over the sand and pebbles. 

So many businesses on the Gulf coast depend heavily on the summer tourist season in order to make ends meet for the rest year.  Unfortunately, the media coverage of the oil spill left Gulf vacationers with the impression that every inch of the coast was covered in oil and tar balls when that was not the case.  The business owners down there are having to contend with a tarnished reputation; so what do you do in that case?  How do you correct a bad impression?

First you have to figure out what you did, what your employees did, or what some third party (that you have no control over) did that got you into the hole.  You can’t fix something unless you know the cause of its problems.  Figuring out the cause is the easy part—just keep an eye on your comment boxes, blogs, and social networking sites.  People will talk and you will soon hear what they have to say about your business.

Second, put a plan together.  Think about what you know needs to happen, what your customers want to see happen, and how to prevent the problem from happening again.  Customers can forgive one major mistake; it may take some time, but they can be willing to give second chances.  Let disaster strike twice and the odds of recovery are greatly reduced, which is pretty bad because the odds of recovering the first time are low enough as it is.

Third, communicate with your customers.  If you made a mistake, admit to it and correct it or you will permanently damage your business.  If someone else made a mistake but your business is still having to pay the price for it, let your customers know that yes, a mistake was made and although it was not yours, you are still wanting to make things right your customers because you value them that much.  Tell your customers how you plan to fix the problem and give them a rough timeline for completion (by the way, always give yourself a buffer on time limits because things tend to go wrong at the worst moments).

Finally, you need to put your plan into action and have tangible evidence that improvements are being made.  Keep detailed logs, make status charts, send out a weekly or monthly report letting your customers know how the improvements are progressing; and throughout the entire process, from beginning to end, keep a positive attitude.  Positivity is infectious and without optimism, you have absolutely no hope of recover.

So, with that in mind, put on a brave face and take one day at a time.

More than three-quarters of customers say their most satisfying experience occurred because they worked with a capable, competent customer agent. This explains the following statistics:

It also transpires that most cross channel experiences are poor with 19 of 53 companies being judged as “very poor” in cross channel reviews by Forrester Research. None were found to be “very good”, 31 were “good”, and the rest (19) were “OK”.

The most common causes of customer defection are the need to repeat themselves, being trapped in an automate system, being forced to wait too long for service, the representatives being unfamiliar with their history or value, and the difficulty of switching between channels.

Paper mail is actually preferred over poorly implemented voice self-service (IVR) because voice response systems don’t recognize customer value, lack context, and do not understand customer needs. (Those trapped in an IVR system spent an average of over 9 minutes trying to reach a human.)

With close to 75% of consumers going from the web to another channel to research, buy, or obtain service, statistics like those above do not bode well for companies that cannot smoothly integrate multiple channels.

One problem is that many companies still operate in silos with a different silo running each communications channel such as a “web team”, a “contact center”, and “sales”, each with their own method of dealing with the customer and their own pool of information. Another type of silo structure involves fragmentation of information needed by customer support into numerous databases to which they have no access. If they do have access the interaction is slowed by the need to access more than one database for all needed information.

The need for multiple channels for interacting with business can be ignored no longer. Channels outside of the phone are now standard for the customer experience. The customer expects these channels to be integrated, with the same information available to each channel. She expects personalized information to be accessible to all channels, and for each channel to provide the same information as every other.

Poor multichannel strategy is responsible for most customer frustrations and each company must determine which channels are used by their particular customers, and choose those that are appropriate for their industry and the type of queries they receive. Both the channel type and the needed infrastructure must be considered, not just for the current integration but for future integrations and channels.