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Setting the Bar for Customer Service?
meburke asks: "Computer repair, copier repair, customer support: It seems to be mostly done the same way for the last 40 years. That is: 'Something breaks, call the repair guy.' But customers expect more, and they can't tell us what they expect, so where do we develop guidelines for customer service and how do we improve? I've searched the net for three days now, and I haven't found a comprehensive list of actions or standards that distinguish the excellent tech from the average tech. Can anyone point me toward some sources?" It seems that as our technology becomes more complex, the service that is offered to customers continues to fall shorter of the mark. What kind of service do you expect from your vendors, and how close is reality to your expectations?
As an aside, shooflot wonders: "If the definition of 'news' includes 'rarity' then good service must be news. My usual experience includes the kind of sulky and dismissive attitude I got from an Apple rep when my new iPod wouldn't charge (I eventually got him to exchange it). However, I was recently surprised by Rogers, my cellphone provider, when I followed up on some charges for ringtones I'd never downloaded. The service rep not only cancelled the charges but discovered I'd been wrongly charged an extra air time fee for the whole last year and credited me for the entire amount plus tax! What great service stories does Slashdot wish to share which (I hope!) may inspire all those other reps in the trenches?"
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is growing in popularity as the defacto "best practices" for IT services. It's not for the faint of heart (nor cheap), but it's extremely comprehensive.
And to blantantly plug the message board in my sig... this is a topic that we discuss there frequently as well. "What's the difference between a 'computer guy' and an 'IT consultant'?" was one of the threads that comes to mind. I know that one of the more frustrating aspects of my job is having to clean up other techs' messes. And worse: having to charge the customer for my time to do that when they already paid the last guy a pretty penny. With PCs now in the magical $300 range, the divide between the two types of techs seems to be growing. I don't know whether this is helping my business or hurting it yet though.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
I think some of it comes from within - if you have a good people nature, you'll be a better tech, at least in the customer service area.I say this from a long time support background, but I have done a lot of different types of it and that internal desire to help others is a constant. A good heart radiates outward to your outlook, manner of working, etc. Wish I could point you to a specific doc, but meebe this helped instead...
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
That sets the bar pretty low and is kind of a sad commentary on the state of IT customer service.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
AOL
"...if people respected copyright more, like you guys do with the GPL so religiously, [the DMCA] wouldn't be necessary."
Although "technical support" may seem to be about technology, it's really about people and their behavior under stress. Having filled dozens of support roles in 20 years as a systems guy, I can tell you that the greatest factors in my success have been patience and humor. What book do you go to to learn those things?
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
And here, I was going to say that you could just walk into the average Best Buy or CompUSA with a complex computer problem, write down everything the technician there does (interactions, attempted fixes, plan of attack, etc.)
The exact opposite of everything you wrote down is exactly what customers would really like.
As we pressure companies for cheaper and cheaper everything, we squeeze out the dollars they need to do support, and they outsource it--to us.
Do I want companies to offer good quality and stand by their work? Sure. Do I expect it? Ha. It's bad enough that I generally just hope the price point is low enough that when it breaks I can afford a new one rather than talk to some unhelpful jerk on the phone.
Look at what's happened to watch repair shops. No one repairs watches any more, they just replace them. Same with shoe repair. Heck, in some regions of the company, away from big cities, it's hard to find contractors to repair houses because the people who know how to do the relevant work find it both easier and more lucrative just to build new ones. Other "technology" will probably follow suit, if it hasn't already.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I find that my DSL company has excellent customer service. They aren't like the phone company who tries to convince you that you caused the problem and starts out by warning you that it will cost you if the problem is found on your site. I think the trick is that the person on the phone is able to fix 90% of the calls. I've called at 3AM, explained the problem, and had it fixed in 5 minutes.
I don't know what customers expect, but if the service was modeled after Speakeasy, I can't see many people complaining. I think part of the trick is that it's a very flat support organization - you don't need to escalate to a level 2 or level 3 person on the phone. The person you get on the call can do everything short of showing up at your door.
Dell, on the other hand, makes people jump through hoops when they call in with a problem (like a dead hard drive). This even happens on corporate accounts - the field techs at work have been known to spend 4 hours on the phone going through dell's script.
You are kidding, right? Service is getting to the point where all they say is "throw it away and get a new one."
In the early days of microcomputers, we used to do component level repair, for example, diagnosing and replacing individual memory chips, or replacing individual chips on disk drive controllers. It's been many years since that was discontinued in favor of swapping out whole circuit boards. And now that is becoming rare, it's rarely cost effective to replace boards, now the techs just tell you to throw the whole unit away and get a new one.
This is a major problem, the IT industry is not manufacturing technology products, they are manufacturing garbage heaps full of unrepairable electronic junk. I would rather buy repairable products that have a longer life, than to pay less for disposable junk.
I've seen some bad customer service, but I've also seen some shocking customer expectations. A friend works at Apple, and one of his headbutt-the-desk moments that come up all too often is when a customer phones complaining that a new model is out, and their 3 month old powerbook/ibook/whatever is now out of date... and will he give them a refund or a replacement unit.
Having also worked on an ISP helpdesk, some of the customer expectations there are equally insane. One business had thousands of business cards, letterheads and other stationary printed with their email address listed as "http://www.businessname.com/". Who did they immediately phone? us - demanding that when someone sends email to "http://www.businessname.com/" that it get to them.
Pity their hosting wasn't with us, even if their net service was.
The technically clueless just want someone to blame if something doesn't work to their satisfaction - and that's entirely fair - however when they come on all insistent that their problems can be fixed by places they can't, or they don't realise their expectations are entirely unrealistic it's when service providers just turn off and want to go "piss off, idiot"
There are three basic lines of support, which I appreciate - and a methodology that is very important.
Go the extra mile. Thats what I look for in support and customer service.
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Trying to purchase some Dell notebooks this week was an excrutiating excercise. The online credit application initially rejected me and gave me a number to call. The person I spoke to was very polite but had absolutely no authority/ability to assist me in getting my credit line established or switching my order to use a credit card instead of the credit line. The order ended up getting cancelled, and the two notebooks I selected from the Dell Outlet site ended up going to somebody else by the time I ended my fruitless 2 hours on the phone. The problem isn't so much that the call centers are offshored, it's that the staff are not provided with any meaningful mechanisms to address customer concerns. They seem to have a list of things that they are expected to respond to and responses they are allowed to give. There is no "go-to" person that you can speak to that can make decisions or provide intervention if the system behaves unexpectedly. Since the call center is located on the other side of the globe from where the orders are managed and shipped, the call center staff is pretty much powerless to act on a customer's behalf.
A remote call center is fine to talk Joe Average in figuring out why their AOL connection isn't working as expected. But when it comes to making a purchase and spending money, I want to speak to somebody who can take action on my behalf. Having my order cancelled and then getting thanked for choosing Dell does not constitute adequate customer service.
A lot of companies treat their customer service as a "bag on the side" rather than as an integral part of the business. As a consequence, the reps aren't empowered to do anything to improve the customer relationship (for example, fixing accounting errors or offering complimentary goodies). Instead, they're held accountable for keeping the costs down by ending calls as soon as possible, by any means necessary.
Worse, I've been at a lot of clients where customer satisfaction is not systematically measured, where there's no incentive for reps to do the right thing, and where there's no awareness that future sales depend on the company's reputation for service as much as on the product itself. This includes some well-known companies where you'd think they'd know better.
The FPP anecdote about Apple is a great example of how great products aren't the end of the experience for customers. The other side of the coin is the somewhat pricey ISP I use. If cost and connectivity were the only drivers, I'd dump them in a heartbeat since broadband is a commodity product. But their tech support and customer service are much better than the (admittedly lousy) average, so I keep on paying the premium.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
I would highly recommend the book: "Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless : How to Make Customers Love You, Keep Them Coming Back and Tell Everyone They Know".
This is required reading at my company. The book has a lot of self-hype, the author can't seem to grasp the concept of ordinal numbers, and is a bit condenscending, but if you get past that it has a LOT of REALLY EXCELLENT customer service advice for all businesses.
Look at the world around you and recall the times you felt you received good service. Doesn't matter if it was from a waitress or a plumber. The first thing that I recall with good service is the persons willingness to step up to the plate and take ownership of you and your problem and following through on doing their best to find a resolution. Even if it's not fixed the first time you know they're doing everything in their power to get it done.
On Thursday this week, I went in to a local Staples store, found a desk and a chair that I liked. I went ahead and ordered it.
A nice man helped me get it all set up for delivery, and gave me the information on some people that can assemble it for me. Wonderful. He says they can email me a delivery time estimate, and that he knows personally they don't sell it or anything like that, so no spam even from them. Very cool.
Yesterday I get a call on my cell, its the delivery guy at my apartment and the managers office won't take delivery or let him in (even at my request) to drop off my stuff. The delivery guy is very friendly, especially considering he's gonna have to come back. He gives me the number I can call to reschedule.
I'm dreading this call. Ohhhhh gawd I think, I'm gonna have to talk to some phone jockey retard who couldn't care less about helping me. So I call. It asks me if I want English or Spanish. BEEP! For a moment, I start to groan to myself as the customer service hoop jumping is about to begin. Wait? What's this? Hello? Holy smokes! A live person, right away! He's friendly and asks me for my name and whats wrong before my order number. He tells me he's going to have to get someone from another department. My stomach sinks again, oh junk, here we go, its the run around. I get about a minute of hold music, and then, woah wait a minute, its the same guy! He's doing a warm/live transfer, and the new guy already has all my info and knows my situation! WOW!
The new guy is friendly too, he gets me set up for a new delivery time, and we part ways.
What's the moral of this story? I mean you'd think it sounded pretty plain. These days, it doesn't. I've come to expect to be punted, lied to, have to jump through 3 dozen hoops until I yell at a manager, just to get the simplest requests past the call center guys that are paid to reduce the amount of customers that want stuff that costs the company more money. Treat me right, give me a little customer service with no bullshit, don't get in arguements with me over who's fault it was I didn't get the email, answer the phone when I call, don't cold dump/punt me, and I am now a Staples customer for life (or at least until they go down the shitty customer service is cheaper route).
~Rebecca
I don't want to make a straight comparison between someone who fixes technology and someone who heals people, but I think medical professionals and IT/computer professionals can be evaluated by some of the same basic questions:
:-))
1. Is the problem resolved?
2. Was the resolution as efficient as possible?
3. Will the fix make it harder to help the person/fix the device in the future? (You want a 'no' on that one
4. Did the fix put the person/users of the technology through any unnecessary hardship? (Another 'no', hopefully.)
Good support is like pornography; you know it when you see it, but it's hard to define.
There is no master list of steps. It couldn't be flexible enough to allow excellence. Here's my vague, hand-wavy suggestions:
1: Do a little more than the support contract says you have to. If it's a serious problem, call the customer a couple days after fixing it to see if it's still fixed.
2: Have your support people educated. Flowcharts and checklists for solving common problems are fine, but don't let anybody answer your phone who doesn't understand the product.
3: Don't use your support system as a sales channel. Solve the customer's problem without fobbing more product on them.
4: Don't put a mediocre support person on first-tier phone support because it's "easier" than the levels for more complex problems. First tier interacts with almost everybody who calls in, it's an important job, get somebody good at it.
5: If a support person in the field calls the home office, the office guy drops everything and deals with it. Make sure you support people know this is an option.
6: If possible, have your field support people familiar not just with your products but with your customers' processes. This helps communication. It's a nice perk when your customers are rather homogenous, but probably doesn't matter for something like photocopier repairs.
In the past I've avoided rebates like the plague. To the best of my knowledge Staples is the only company that has an option to submit your rebate online AND has a way to track the rebate even if you've mailed it in.
So, this is something studied for years, and companies still don't get it? I guess especially in technical arenas I've seen they really don't, though I can't begin to imagine why not.
It's really about satisfying the customer... treat 'em like they're people, don't lie to them, do any and everything you say you'll do, don't make promises you can't keep.
My best experiences with any support be it on-line, by phone, or in person have little (if anything) to do with final resolution of the problem, but more to do with whether I was treated respectfully. Some of my best "support" experiences have come from people who clearly didn't know the answer to my problem, but knew steps to take to ensure my problem was addressed.
Companies who drive support to "bottom line" criteria are missing the much bigger picture of what an unhappy customer base does to the bottom line. I go out of my way to stay loyal to businesses who care enough to have a relationship with me. On the other, for example, a bank whose exponential growth over the last 10 years has grown at the cost of their local flavor and service has lost me as a customer... I've moved all of my accounts from them to another friendlier local credit union.
Not sure why this is such a hard problem for businesses to solve...
That is: 'Something breaks, call the repair guy.' But customers expect more...
More what exactly? Psychic predictive repair? Technicians dressed as 1950's pop icons? Free balloons for the kids?
Look, it's computer repair. You can talk about making computers more reliable or easier to use, but there's always going to be a need for the "call the repair guy" option. At that point, the customer just wants their computer fixed. Quickly and efficiently, and preferrably cheap or free.
Yes, there are a lot of companies out there who are horrible at computer service, but there are also some good ones as well. The focus needs to be on improving that level of service, not redefining or creating new services.
As a person who has been doing this awhile, the following link was the best article I have ever read on this subject: http://whatexit.org/tal/data/techjob.html/
How about companies that use technology to track whether you are a customer and haven't paid your bill, but can't get their system to work? It's the non-customer who pays (either time or money). Case in point, 3.5 years ago I cancelled my AT&T phone service. Yesterday, I had to deal with them billing me the final bill yet again. Last summer, and the summer before, and other times as well, I've been told that the problem is permanently corrected and I won't have any more problems. Yeah right, I'm keeping my copy the cancled check for $12.27 dated January 16, 2002.
...
....
... don't even think about me!'
At the end of my hourlong session on the phone, the lady then asked:
Can I interest you in our phone
At which point I cut her off stating I was a life-long non-customer of AT&T based on this experience. Then she launched right into:
How about broadband
At which point I said again something like: "I'll never ever even consider AT&T - I want you guys to delete me from your DB completely, don't just flag me as closed. Never call me, never send me mail, don't email
The lady on the phone actually giggled when I said "don't even think about me!"
I'm sure I'll get to reuse the joke next summer when the AT&T bills start coming again (I ignore them and wait for the calls to start -- I figure it costs AT&T more money that way).
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The obvious example of excellent tech support to follow is...BicycleRepairman! Quoted from a bicycle web site:
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
- You go down to PCWorld, and the reps there try to brush you off with the tersest replies they can muster. Worse is the look in their eyes if you ask them something and you can almost see the smirk twirling around their lips as they answer you. Which is wiped only when you trash their whole theory that I should buy a PC, when you tell them how you checked the motherboard and concluded its the SMPS that's busted
- Countless software vendors I've worked with in the past have had the same attitude - 'dude, its your problem.'. Until you send them a log of their own software falling over itself every two minutes, or how it encountered an 'unexpected situation' and keeps writing a wierd error message in the logs.
- Not that I'm dyed-in-wool. I'm currently working for a company recently acquired by Micromuse, and they mess their customers around as soon as they receive the PO. The sheer infighting and the jealousy kills any scope of friendliness and care for the customer. Little wonder the customers turn nasty
I don't think that people have woken up to the fact that buying a software is so unlike buying hardware. If its faulty or doesn't work, the hardware may be repaired or exchanged, while in software, they just mess you around, till you either threaten to sue them, or worse still, get your money back, return their software and lose your precious timehttp://efil.blogspot.com/
It's the nature of customer service to be asked to provide infinite knowledge and support with little or know reliable input from the customer. And its the nature of the customer to always want more and never feel completely satisfied. End users will never have a good technical understanding of the problems they encounter nor will they know how to communicate that as more than their frustration.
Take auto repair centers. Cars have been around for over a century now, and yet the average schmoe who brings a car in with a problem usually describes it as "there's this noise" or "its just runs funny". And even the most competent mechanics have to put up with the "end user" who feels cheated simply because he/she doesn't have a clue what the mechanic actually did.
The technology may change, but the nature of the people using it and needing support never will.
The best support techs I know are those that have good listening and analytical skills. "People skills". Not necessarily the most knowledgeable people, but the ones that can listen to the end user, break the problem down into concrete areas, and if unable to fix it can at least escalate and communicate the problem properly to those who can.
The comment previously about the Bicycle Repairman skit on Monty Python made a good point.
Cursing out a young adult and calling him a moron isn't insightful -- it's disgraceful.
Educate whenever possible and treat others the way you wish to be treated. I'm sure the guy that gave you all those mod points was trying to be very very nice.
I told that kid, "Fuck off, moron,"
So you counter ignorance with rudeness and wonder why Customer Service is piss poor?
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