A New Year's Resolution

I would like to propose a New Year's resolution for all businesses.

--Focus on your Customers.

Yes, this is a simple sentence (OK, it's really just a phrase) and yes, it can be done.

With our global economy and our lives ever increasing to a 24 x 7 pace, there is a constant need for outstanding customer service.

Readers - I challenge you to be a rising star and focus on your customers.

Everything else will follow.

Thanks for reading and I look forwad to a great new year of Customer Focus,

Brandon

The best complement you can get....

Today, I want to deviate from my standard recipe of customer service stories, ideas and tips to say "Thanks" to Becky Carroll at Customers Rock .

Becky is one of the most Customer Focused folks I have read online and it was a great honor to have her list me on her blog as an Outstanding Blog.

Do yourself a favor and visit Becky , you'll find the conversation very stimulating and idea provoking.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon

Dot Com 2.0?

Thanks to Phil Gerbyshak for posting this. Very humorous, and this invokes the first tenet of Customer Service Voodoo:

Truism #1 - You must have a solid product

Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Brandon

Holidays are a great time to WOW! your customers

We are smack dab in the middle of the holidays. Just a few weeks until Christmas and shopping for gifts has been going strong for several weeks. The average American will spend almost $1,000 this year on Christmas. If you break it down, we will spend (on average):

$500 on gifts for family,
$100 on gifts for friends and co-workers,
$50 on decorations for the home
$100 on food
and the rest on items such as Christmas cards, treats and such.

With all of the purchasing going on, this is the perfect time to really take care of your customers. Whether it is retail, food or insurance, the holiday season gives us a perfect opportunity to punch it up a notch.

I guarantee that they will remember when your interaction with them stands out this month.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon

Be Thankful for Your Customers...or....Customers = Revenue

**Excuse my slang in advance**

Dissin' your customers seems to be a burgeoning trend among employees. It is not solely constrained to the Gen X and Gen Y crowd, oh no! I have observed it with Boomers as well who do not seem to appreciate that the customer is the very reason for their having a job.

So, stop, STOP! I say and give thanks for your customers. After all, if you don't appreciate them, someone else will. It takes very little, but here are some ideas:

Thank You Notes

Thank Your Employees

And by the way, thank you, Becky Carroll, for your awesome blog Customers Rock, with many inspiring ideas. Visit Becky and join in her discussions.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon

A Thank You Goes a Long Way

Recently, I wrote about Thanking Your Customers and being Thanksgiving, reflected upon this novel idea and thought about all the interactions that we have daily and what happens when Thanks You's are given freely.

This was a little hard to wrap my thoughts around, but the basic thought was that the more I thanked someone at the close of an interaction, the more personal the exchange became. I do this naturally most of the time and I have been noticing that the more genuine the Thank You becomes, the more smiles occur and (hopefully) the better that person's day will be.

This is a very simplfied version of Pay It Forward (the movie, not the Ben Frankline debt reduction program), but it works. Try thanking your co-workers, your family members, your boss and those who provide you with customer service. Let me know how it works and thanks for reading.

Brandon

Customer Service Tip #4 - Stand Out!

I am a huge Kirk Weisler (www.kirkweisler.com) fan. If you have the opportunity to hear him speak, buy a ticket, sneak in with the staff, just do whatever you have to in order to listen to this man. Kirk is a big advocate of reading. As in books. Not the Internet, not magazines, but old school books. If Kirk is correct, and also my initial research (both online and from talking to people over the past few years) , about half of Americans never read another book after high school.

Based on this number, if you read one book after age 18, you are ahead of the pack. As Kirk explained, the bar is set so low that all you have to do is lift your feet a few inches off the ground and you are over the hurdle. Now, if you read (gasp!) one book per decade, you are practically on fire. And if you could manage (hold on here), one book per year, you are a Rock Star!

This week, I was reading Becky Carroll's Customers Rock (customersrock.wordpress.com) and found that her post "Making a difference for customers" reminded me of Kirk's presentation. Customer Service is at an all-time low. It really takes so little to stand out and provide excellent customer service.

The basic tenets of Customer Service are not that hard and yet, as a whole, seem to be disappearing. So, if you and your team / company are moderately concerned for your customers, you are way ahead of most. And, if you really dig in and take care of your customers, you will stand out. It's that easy, folks.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon

Customer Service Zen...become really good at your job

Today was a free worldwide tele-seminar on personal branding - http://www.personalbrandingsummit.com/. Take a minute to visit the site, I am told that soon, podcasts will be posted of all 24 of the sessions.

I was able to listen to several of the speakers, among them Debbie Weil (http://www.debbieweil.com/, and Phil Gerbyshak (makeitgreat.typepad.com). My takeaway from today's speakers is that we can, should and are all branding ourselves constantly. For our work, that means that we are creating an image of ourselves in the minds of our customers.

For myself, I have worked very hard with my team (both up and down the chain) to brand ourselves as a customer focused team. This encompasses not only responding to issues that happen, but also a constant nurturing of our customers to "check in" and to communicate frequently so that they know us and trust us.

Specific things that we do are visiting them periodically (drop in or scheduled), periodic "touch base" meetings, ad hoc calls, emails and thank you cards (an idea from Phil Gerbyshak) and in general, making sure that we are more than "just someone to call when things go wrong."

The feedback over time has snowballed into something truly wonderful. I'm not sure if we are quite to the level of Raving Fans, but we feel as though we are on the right track.

Feel free to use any of these techniques and I would love to hear from you on ideas you have tried.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon

Customer Service Tip #3 - Focus on the Customer...all the time!

This tip actually struck me last night while I was in the checkout line at my local grocery store. Let me state that first of all, I love shopping at this store. While it is part of a large chain in Northern California, they make extra efforts to make it seem like your local friendly grocer.

They do everything from sharpening your knives for free at the butcher area to running (yes, actually running) to go get an item that you forgot while you are checking out, to walking you out to your car and putting your grocery bags in your trunk. In short, their customer service is phenomenal!

So, last night, I stopped for some groceries on the way home from work and as I was watching the clerk ring up my food, I noticed a young guy (a twenty-something) that was not wearing the official store uniform working his way down the checkout lines and talking to each courtesy clerk (checkers, and baggers). Since this was just after work, each line was full and the store had quite a few customers.

As he came up to my line, I happened to be standing between my checker and bagger, so as he moved between them to talk, I happened to hear their conversation.

It turned out that he was the local Union representative for the workers and was letting them know that the new Union contract had been signed and would go into effect shortly, within a week or two. I can appreciate it when I am told relevant information in a timely manner, however, he then proceeded to tell both the checker and bagger that they would be getting good raises out of this.

All this in front of me, the customer! I felt like asking if the good raises that they would get meant that my cost of food would go up! This was not a great way to focus on the customer.

I watched him continue down the line and tell each worker this information. Not a one of them reacted to his news. In fact, they instead maintained a very professional composure and focused on the customers in front of them.

I went home, told my wife and decided that this exemplified both the worst and best of this Customer Service Tip....Focus on the Customer....all the time!

The Bad - The Union Rep chose an inappropropriate time, place and method for communicating the good news to the workers.

The Good - The workers (my checker had a name tag on that said Head Clerk and looked like he had worked there at least 10 or 15 years, my bagger was in high school or just out of it) were VERY professional, as are all that store's staff and maintained their focus on me - the Customer.

The Moral, i.e. the Tip - No matter what happens, put a bubble around you and your customer and do not let anything take away your focus. I will continue to frequent that store and I am certain that I will continue to get excellent service. If you are in Northern California, you should give them a try (http://www.raleys.com/ for the closest one).

P.S. - No matter how urgent it is, unless someone's life is involved (a fire, a spouse or child is sick), don't be the Union Rep....those matters can always be communicated away from the customer.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon

Customer Service Tip #2 - Be Consistent

This Customer Service tip is predicated on the history of the word customer. Straight from Wikipedia, the definition of customer...historically derives from "custom," meaning "habit"; a customer was someone who frequented a particular shop, who made it a habit to purchase goods there, and with whom the shopkeeper had to maintain a relationship to keep his or her "custom," meaning expected purchases in the future.

Our customers today keep the same patterns. They become accustomed to certain products and services and expect those to be consistent. Now of course, if the product or service that we are providing is not meeting their expectations, then they will leave us (quite rapidly usually) for our competitors.

However, assuming that our customers are content with our current level of service and / or quality of product, then the number one concern that we should have is to be consistent.

One of my favorite examples is a restaurants that have been around a few decades - either small town or downtown - it does not matter. Ask anyone who goes there why they like it so much, the answer will always lead to consistency. They order the same food, the get used to the same friendly staff and same atmosphere. Behind it all, you will find a contented owner who is (generally) making a fair living.

People like consistency - give it to them.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon

Darth Vader Works At My Help Desk

A while back, I wrote this article for HDI's Support World magazine (http://www.thinkhdi.com/). It orginally appeared in the July / August 2006 issue of Support World. The original idea came from Kirk Weisler (http://www.kirkweisler.com/) and I mulled the idea for a while and expanded it. Here it is in the original form.


Darth Vader Works at My Help Desk

Conceivably, there are a few people in the world who have no idea who Darth Vader is. I actually have met two people in my life that had never seen any of the Star Wars movies. Most people, however, are familiar with the famous and widely loved chief villain of the series. Come on, throw out the name “Darth Vader” in a group of people and stand back. Odds are that within 10 seconds, someone will either make the deep hissing sound that we all know or a somewhat-passable imitation of James Earl Jones will sound forth with, “Luke….I Am Your Father.”

Several years ago, I heard a great speaker (Kirk!) talk about the Darth Vader’s who work at our help desks. We all have had them work for us and we all know who they are. They may be brilliant technicians who are genuinely outstanding in their fields; however, no one can work near them, with them or anywhere in the general vicinity of them.

I had nearly forgotten about the Darth Vader employee until one day when I watched one of the original Star Wars movies (The Empire Strikes Back, in case you wanted to know) with my son and thought back to that speaker and the Darth Vader reference. I then started to think about what other Star Wars characters are sitting on my team? I’m pretty sure that I have a Han Solo or two that are shooting from the hip and swashbuckling their way through the IT galaxy. There are definitely a few Storm Troopers – you know the type – precision accuracy, never run away from an issue, just attack it and keep gong, no matter what happens and no matter who dies, and, yes, they are all clones and seem exactly like the 37 other technicians who they replaced. Now that I got started, I think that I have seen the entire Star Wars universe parade through my call center – the whining Luke Skywalker’s, the unintelligible Chewbacca’s, the aloof Princess Leia’s, the list goes on. I believe that many of these characters inhabit each help desk – you just have to know where to look for them. Please note that each of the following can actually be male or female – the characteristics apply to either gender.


Let’s dive in….

Luke Skywalker – In the saga, Luke Skywalker always saves the day. But when you get beyond the implausible heroics, the everyday Luke is not really someone that you would want to hang out with. For one thing, he just fell off the turnip truck and stares big-eyed at everything around him. “You’ve worked at IBM? How was it? You know the Unix administrators? Tell me about them.” That gets really tiring after a couple of months.
Secondly, he whines. He whines a lot. “Uncle Owen, I wanted to go into town and get some parts….Mike, I wanted to go to lunch at 11 today….Bob, you said I could work on the email project this Friday….”

Han Solo – As I alluded to earlier, your basic Han Solo employee is pretty much a cowboy that lives close to the edge. You are never sure if his patched together PC will work, but he really knows how to get things done. He revolves around his own rewards, as in, “If I do this, can I have off next Friday?” but when it comes down to it, he always comes through with blazing guns and just-in-time arrivals. The next time you really need a server brought back on line by 5 AM, assign it to Han and sit back and wait. About 4:59, it will come on line.

The Storm Troopers – I really try to avoid hiring too many Storm Troopers. Now, you see a lot of these guys out there. They seem to be everywhere you turn. In fact, every time we post a job opening, I get about 200 resumes that have Storm Trooper written all over their Microsoft certifications. These guys are great for your ordinary frontal assault. If you have Microsoft Office, Outlook and Internet Explorer issues, they can take the objective with precision-like accuracy and overwhelming speed. For legacy systems and proprietary apps, they’ll put up a good fight, asking all the questions that were drilled into their heads ever since they were…er…cloned. However, in my experience, they don’t have a lot of skills in improvising and once they get put into an area where they are out gunned, they start to fall apart. Just like in the movies, they are good in numbers for huge help desks that deal with mind numbingly repetitive issues.

Chewbacca – He’s huge, he’s hairy and only one or two people can understand him. You have this employee working for you right now! He’s great to take him to meetings, because everyone just stares at him. On the other hand, Chewbacca is fiercely loyal and will literally defend you with, well, other people’s lives. Oh yeah, he also really good at fixing legacy software.
Princess Leia Organa-Skywalker – You may have noticed that there are not a lot female characters in the Star Wars movies (kind of like in the Information Technology world). Those who do work in IT are generally used to the Mos Eisley Cantina atmosphere that pervades the average IT shop. A select few have risen above the background status so often afforded the help desk and as a result, make it a challenge for those around them –not unlike her royal highness Princess Leia.

The Princess Leia Help Desk person is used to being in charge. She is very passionate about her work and is used to being right -- whether she is right or not. Most of the time, she (or he) works quietly in the background (always within camera shot), moving tickets through the process, helping wherever she is needed, keeping an orderly rhythm to the usual madness of IT support.

Do not be fooled however, as Princess Leia has the habit of leaving her work to address whatever pressing issue she happens to have on her agenda. While her issues are generally good for everyone, they usually don’t mesh with the overall strategy. Yes, yes, it would be nice if we all had natural light and windows to look out of, however, down here in sub-basement C, that’s not going to happen. If you can get her put on a committee, however, she may be able to make things better for the whole division.

Yoda – Wise, old, quiet. Very easy to overlook, however, Yoda is your secret weapon. He has deep knowledge of everything and is a virtual master of everything he touches. He knows all and can do all. And for some strange reason, he is hiding out in your swamp. Treat him well and the force will be with you.

c. 2005 Brandon Caudle

This article may be reproduced in whole or in part for non-commercial use – however, please credit the author.

Customer Service Tip #1 - The Customer Is Always Right

Startting off our 52 tips is the Golden Rule of Customer Service:

The Customer Is Always Right!

While that may seem like a no-brainer, it is increasingly common to experience the complete reversal of this mantra. Between the virtual walls thrown up around online customer service (note the lack of capitalization due to lack of service) and the permeation of Generation Slack* into almost every facet of the workforce, bad customer service, or customer disservice is more the norm than the exception.

So, remember, the Customer is our source of revenue. They are always right and speak with their wallets. Even when they are wrong (yes! I said it!), they should be treated as though they are right.

This little secret....."should be treated as though they are right".....will go miles in your Customer Relations. Try it, the results are disarmingly fantastic!

Thanks for reading,

Brandon



*Note - I can use the term Generation Slack because I AM from that generation. Email me if you want to know more...

Only 51 Weeks Until Customer Service Week

We just finished Customer Service Week and in talking with my team, I said, "Hey, only 51 weeks until Customer Service Week." While that garnered a good laugh and quite a few comments about how much fun we had, it also prompted some great discussions on how we can continue that spirit of truly great customer service all year.

To help out, I will be posting a Customer Service tip every week. Feel free to mail me your own ideas and I'l be more than happy to post them. Thanks for reading,

Brandon

Customer Service Week? Why Not Customer Service Year?

The world has just ended Customer Service Week* and I participated in some fabulous activities, both with my work team and also on a larger scale. We had some really fun activities which we designed to incent ourselves to provide better customer service for the week. We held some friendly competitions to try and out-do our normal service levels and made it fun with some prizes, lots of food and a few games for team building. On a national level, we participated in HDI's Customer Service Week webinars (www.thinkhdi.com/csweek) and heard from some absolutely great speakers via five webinars.

As we progressed through our week, we selected random customers (we provide internal IT Support) and delivered small gifts and thank you cards to them. The feedback was great.

Then, during one of the webinars we attended, the speaker Phil Gerbyshak (http://makeitgreat.typepad.com) shared a great idea - to write a thank you note and make a call to one of your customers daily or weekly.

That made us stop aand think. It takes 5 minutes to handwrite a note and send it and about 5 minutes to make a call. It's not to sell them anything, merely to express your thanks for being your customer. If you do this weekly, you will make a more personal connection with approximately 100 of your customers (50 via email and 50 via phone - you'll miss a few weeks due to sick or vacation - trust me) and that is a heck of a way to reach out. If you can do this daily, you will reach over 500 of them!

This sounds like a lot of work, but it takes 10 minutes a day. If you have several people of your team that have the "giddy-up" to help out and you share the work, it truly can be just a few minutes of your week. This takes our random "gift and thank you card" winners for this week and excellerates it to a new level. This is taking Customer Service Week and making it Customer Service Year!

We are going to try this out at work, I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon





*Some trivia - Customer Service Week (or CSW as it is known on the inside) was officially declared a nationally recognized event by Congress and President George H. W. Bush in 1992.

Customer Service Voodoo

Customer Service is the elusive, mysterious intangible that so often separates the mediocre from the good from the truly great. Virtually every facet of our daily lives has some aspect of customer service, yet we rarely encounter customer service that is above average and even less do we have a truly outstanding experience.

From our interaction with the cashiers and baggers at our local grocery store to the customer service agent who answers the phone when we call for help with our satellite TV system to the programmers that make the self service gas pump experience occur, we cannot go a single day without at least a dozen customer service interactions.

What makes some experiences good, many others average and a few really great? Some people believe that customer service is innate and that you either get it or you don’t. Whether that is a true statement or not, the world has already shifted to a service oriented environment – stop and think about it, I challenge you to count your customer service interactions today.

From the 2, 3 or more meals that we eat daily to the shopping (online or in person), there are customer service interactions literally all around us. Some are great, others are just horrible and quite a few are solidly in the never-never land of mediocre.

What exactly is it that makes a great customer service interaction? In nearly all cases, there are a combination of things that work together to make a memorable experience. In some cases, they mesh to form an experience which is quite forgettable - the customer does not encounter any issues and is very pleased, there are no complaints!

Over the next few posts, we'll explore some of the basic tenants that form the core foundation of outstanding customer service. See you next time as we uncover and reveal some of the mystique of customer service, to unravel the Voodoo that many do not understand. That magic which is…Customer Service.

Do You Really Have to Charge Extra for the Sour Cream?

One of the simplest maxims of customer service is......Give them what they want.

Now, I believe that the saying was orginally much longer and got truncated over the years. I believe that the original saying was.....Give them what they want without nickel and diming them for it. But of course, over time, we lost the end of that saying and now all we have left is - Give them what they want. It's still a very true statement, however, I would like to take a look at the whole saying and see how it can enhance your customer service.

I know, I know, I can already hear the critics saying, "But what if they want something that I don't have or what if they want something that costs more than they are paying me?" Take heart, my virtual naysayers, I am not talking about letting one con artist cheat you out of your entire savings. Rather, I am standing my the adage that if you take care of you customers, they will take care of you. And I think we can all agree that the pay off is generally great for you in the long run.

Allow me to share an example. My family and I often go to a specific Mexican restaurant chain that is here in the Sacramento area. They have great prices and a wide selection of food. In this restaurant, you order at the counter and then sit down and they bring it out to you. We generally order, more or less, the same dishes because we have found what our kids will eat and, we wall know that once you find the groove for your two year old, you do not deviate from that path!

Anyway, my wife love to have sour cream and guacamole with her Mexican food. It's a staple for her and while some of the dishes have that automatically, some do not. While I try to always make it a point to ask for it up front, so that we ensure that she gets it with her food. Occasionally, I will forget and in these cases, the food arrives without sour cream or guacamole. When that occurs, I go up to the counter and ask for it.

This is where it gets interesting. I am always asked if I want a small or large sour cream and / or guacamole. I always answer that I want a small one.

Inevitably, I am charged a small sum (a dollar or so) for the sour cream or guacamole. It doesn't really irk me, and I follow that this is just their procedure and allows them to keep costs under control. Would I like free sour cream or guacamole? Sure I would, but I understand business. So, each time, I pay my dollar and walk back to the table where my wife is very happy that she now has sour cream or guacamole.

This has continued for months until a while back, I forgot to ask for guacamole when we ordered and then, when I went to the counter to step through the ritual, the woman running the counter that day simply handed the small container of guacamole to me and then refused my outstretched dollar!

I was amazed. I offered it again to her and she replied "No, I've got it," smiled and walked away. Wow! I was blown away. Not because of the dollar that I saved, but that she understood the basic principle of customer service.

I floated back to the table and shared my good news with my family. A good meal became a great meal. My kids seemed angelic, the sounds of the restaurant blurred into the background and I enjoyed by gourmet quesadilla like I had never tasted something so exquisite before in my life!

Because I am a customer service fanatic, I tend to mull good and bad interactions for quite a while so as to extract what I can apply in my own work. As I thought about what had just occured, I realized that this woman was in fact, one of the managers there at the restaurant and that she had the power to give out sour cream and guacamole for free! Having put myself through college working in restaurants, I knew some of the costs that are associated with food and understand that there is a threshold that every restaurant must maintain in order to break even.

Now, I am not suggesting that restaurants give away everything for free! No, instead, I am hoping that this manager will take the opportunity to discuss food costs with her boss and see if this is something that can be taught to the junior employees to be used at their discretion so that more people can have as great a meal as I did.

I but groceries like everyone else. I love to cook, so perhaps I buy more, I don't know. I am familiar with the price of sour cream as well as avocados. Because of that, I don't have a blanket
statement of what you should and should not do.

However, I challenge all of us to find out what the price of our sour cream is and see if there is a way to hand it out for free when our paying customer asks for it. It might just make their day.

Good eating,

Brandon

But, they talk back!

I can already hear the questions. What does "But, They Talk Back" mean. Who is "they" and why do I care that they talk back?

For the millions, make that tens of millions, of us that make a living providing some type of service, the answer to this life changing, career enhancing and attitude adjusting phrase is - people! People talk back.

Quite simply, the biggest unknown in the world are people. Unlike computers, math, science and a host of other very predictable things in our lives, people are the unknown quantity. They can be (the key word here is CAN) erratic, fickle, inconsistent, temperamental, and possible, the biggest uncertainty that we run into in our daily lives.

For some, that uncertainty is not really that big of a deal. But for many of us, dealing with people is a challenge and can be quite difficult. That's where we need a little help.

So, stop by once in a while and read some thoughts on what makes people tick and how to work with them. I hope you find it useful for your job, your career and your daily interactions. If you have thoughts of your own, let me know.

Stay tuned,

Brandon