Reflections on Friday’s “Rant”

In my last post, I went on a bit of a “rant” against my wireless provider, something I rarely do on this blog in public, and almost never by name. But the breakdowns in everything from how the CSR handled the specific transaction involved, to the underlying design of their processes and enabling technologies, generated such a wealth of fodder on “how NOT to run a CS function” that I really felt compelled to let loose.

Today, there are so many examples of “poor” customer service littered all over the blogosphere and twitter-verse that most of you probably get tired of reading about them (I know I do). But sometimes “venting” a bit on paper helps me get over a bad experience, and since today’s writing tablet is my blog, I figured “what the heck”… As it turns out, I did sleep pretty well after I got that rant out of my system, so apparently, the “therapy” worked for me.

That notwithstanding, I was fairly certain that this post would go largely unnoticed, and that I would awake on Saturday morning with a new attitude, ready to spend my usual “bogging hour” generating some fresh now topics for the coming week (which were bound to be more upbeat and forward looking). At least, that was the intent.

As with most things however, my expectations were once again incorrect. What I thought was a stupid little “throw away” post  on my Friday afternoon CS experience generated about two times the volume of readership than any of my posts in the last several months. While I’d like to think it was “earned” based on good preparation, research, and authorship, the facts are that this was one that had zero preparation, was written on pure emotion and adrenalin, and was probably one of the most “long winded” posts I’d written in a while.

Learning from a bad experience…”Delight the Customer”!!!

Reading through the comments, and reflecting a bit on the post, I realized that I struck quite a nerve in people who are both passionate about Customer Service, and who (like all of us) have had theie share of negative experiences. The responses I got ranged from “resignation” (this sucks, but unfortunately, ” it is what it is”), to comparative reflection on companies who do in fact “get it”,  and a sense of anticipation that type of excellence will once again return to this industry. In fact, reading and thinking about some of the positive examples of CS in our society (both from today and the “good old days”) was little like “comfort food” for me in healing the pain I endured on Friday. What was a negative post, created positive energy. And that was good.

However, amidst all of those gyrations, I couldn’t help but reflect on words that kept popping up as I read the article and reader comments, which mostly revolved around the notion of “delighting the customer” and “exceeding expectations“. These words seem to show up often just after we juxtapose a bad customer experience with a really good example of what it should look like. Phases like “CS should look to (fill in the blank) company, and how they Delight the Customer (instead of really mucking it up like they did)” are very common in these situations.

If we could only have providers that “Delight the Customer”!!!…Those words make us feel hopeful that we someday will return to the good old days and the types of companies who really “got it”.

In the late 80’s and 90’s, we were trained to think differently about Customer Service, and follow in the footsteps of what I’ll call the “CS legends” of that era. And those of us who started our careers in that era, remember all too well those iconic images of companies “going the extra mile”, often  with some kind of dramatic, back-breaking demonstration of Customer Service “heroics”. Most of us probably remember the old FedEx example from the mid 90’s where an employee hired a helicopter to get a package to the recipient (I can’t remember if it was an organ donation, or a 10 year old’s package from Santa, but I digress :)). Whether it’s that anecdote, or one from a current era, that type of  “over delivery” has become somewhat of an accepted  standard for what “best practice” should look like, and the basis around which some of us continue to shape our expectations.

While I don’t excuse experiences like I had on Friday, I must admit that I did begin to reflect on, and actually question what “the standard” should be. What should have been my expectation? What should have been their goal for delivery against that expectation? And if their goal was to “delight the customer”, what should that look like in everything from the process to the behavior of the rep himself?

A New Standard: “Delighting the Customer” and “Exceeding Expectations”?

Some (counterintuitive) perspectives from the “old school”…

I recall working with a older (and wiser) colleague of mine about 15 years ago (he’s even older and wiser now!), who told me that the goal for Customer Service should be to MEET, not exceed the customer’s expectation. And as a relatively young and unseasoned professional, my reaction was something like bull #$@*!

Heck, I probably recited that same Fed Ex story, along with every other example that was floating around in the B-school literature and CS journals in those days. Back then, I would have rationalized my response by telling myself that this guy was “an engineer “after all (no offense to you engineers out there, but in the industry I was in at the time, engineers had developed a reputation among the “Customer Ops side” of the business of being “old school” thinkers and “barriers to change” (an obvious error in judgement by those in CS, but reality nonetheless). Why?, because that industry, which was going through unprecedented change and feverish levels of competition, had developed two competing cultures. Engineers on one side who were literally “keeping the lights on”, and the Customer side of the organization  (Sales, PR, Customer Service, Marketing, etc.) who were often flaunting their MBA’s, B-school pedigrees, and FedEx case studies around the C-suite, with considerable levels of success. “Pragmatists and doers”, versus the “ivory tower thinkers”. Always a recipe for disrespect of alternate views, and perhaps a subject for a future post.)

At the time, I remember thinking to myself, “this guy really has his head in the sand “(or somewhere less desirable!!). His words were so foreign to me, and it sounded so ‘ass backwards’. After all, in addition to all of the new “feel good” CS legends and case studies, surely there were the old adages of “the customer is king” and “the customer is always right” that he should have been tuned into. So how could anyone think that “exceeding expectations” could be ANYTHING BUT “universal truth“?

Well, we’ve both moved on from there. We’re both older and wiser on many issues, and I do enjoy seeing him occasionally and sharing a good cigar. While we’ve never really talked much more about that specific exchange, working together in the years after showed me enough about what he really meant.

What he was getting at was this: that we, as service providers spend so much time trying to beat the standard that we often miss it entirely. He was also saying that when we try and envision what it will take to truly “delight the customer”, we often get it wrong. That is, we often don’t take the time to know what will delight the customer or not. And if we get it wrong, it becomes a slippery slope.

To “Meet” or “Exceed”?

While you may agree or disagree with his perspective, or its application in the real world, there is something to reflect on here.

But what happened on Friday had nothing to do with failing to “delight me”, or “failure to over-deliver on anything”. What it was, was an abysmal failure to meet even the most basic expectations. And now that I look back on it, many of the things the company may have “thought” it was doing to “delight me” (new kiosks, new ‘sign in process’, flashy technology, etc), were actually viewed by me a “background noise” to the transaction I was there to take care of.

Fact is, the simple act of meeting basic expectations can, and often does, drive BIG success- both in terms of magnitude and sustainability.

Think about McDonalds. Same (or very close) experience- Every product, every store, every time! They thrive on CONSISTENCY of the core product, and very little in my view on “exceeding expectations” and “the delight factor” (at least in the context of the “legends” I referenced earlier). Most people that frequent McDonald’s expect what they expect, and get it consistently.

Southwest Airlines is another good example. Come on!!–An airline that actually made money when everyone else was losing their tails, …and they don’t even have first class cabins or in-flight meals? That’s right. Because they MEET expectations that they set. No surprises (which in my view is a bigger key to Customer Satisfaction than over-delivery)

Of course, I fully understand that some  of those who preach the principle of  “delighting the customer”, are really saying the equivalent of “over deliver on the promise you make (whatever that promise is) and then give that “little extra touch” (or what we used to call in New Orleans where I grew up, “lagniappe”– which in the Creole dialect means “a little bit extra”).

In fact, I believe that is exactly what both Southwest and McDonalds do. Not that they set the bar low, but they set it commensurate to the market they serve and target, and then service exactly to that standard. Then, perhaps where opportunities present themselves, they surround that experience with small touches of the “extras” in the way of smiles, humor, and courtesy. It’s all relative to the standard you set. And consistently delivering against your standard is a sure way to profitability.

Over delivery sometimes backfires…

Unfortunately, there are many practitioners, trainers and consultants that still interpret the “delight factor” as the type of dramatic heroics exhibited by the old legends of the game. The problem with this aspiration, no matter how noble, is that it often takes  your eye off the ball so to speak, and distracts attention from meeting the core expectation. And that’s the main lesson I took away from my old colleague.

While “exceeding expectations” may score you some points, it can also be a slippery slope for a few reasons. First, you may not know what that elusive “delight factor” or threshold is for a specific customer or demographic. It’s hard for even the best companies to “get right” even with decent  market intelligence, and you usually don’t have a lot of “practice shots” to test your hypotheses without experiencing some fallout. More importantly, over-delivery on something that doesn’t matter to customers, AT BEST loses you a few bucks, and at WORST serves as the type of background noise mentioned above that will only frustrate a customer more. And with the state of our Market Research and survey effectiveness these days (see comments on the above referenced post), you have more of a chance getting it wrong than right.

As an example, I am reminded of two separate instances where my flight left 15 minutes early, clearly “delighting” a few, but not me and some other passengers who were stuck in security both times. And yes, I was an hour early in both instances. Thankfully, it was before blogging so ya’ll didn’t have to endure that rant. It was ugly, I can assure you.

Over delivery can also cost you dearly. Not always, but every investment in a customer is likely to have a point of diminishing returns. And in this economic climate, you need to make tough choices on how you will differentiate, compete and win. Often, competing on core product and core delivery is a winner.

One again, Wisdom Wins…

Getting back to my old colleague for a minute. The fact that he was an engineer (a profession I have since learned to respect greatly) did give some insight (albeit a few years later) as to why he believed what he did. Of course, some of it was based on his experience with customers directly over the years. But some of it was based on his own history.

You see, if engineers get it wrong, delivering outside of spec on either side, then it’s usually “lights out” (figuratively and sometimes literally). I would suspect the same with accountants, airline pilots, and any other industry where meeting expectation is the first and often only objective. So it’s a philosophy that shapes them, and to realize that will help us all understand their words and perspectives better. But the reality is, that none of them would probably take issue with the “delight factor”, but they will also never put that as priority 1. And I, for one, don’t want them to.

Understand the expectation, set the bar, and deliver on  it. If, after all of that, you’ve got a little “lagniappe” left to offer, have at it…

Well, Friday has come and gone, and the weekend is now here. I’ve written a bit more than usual this week, enabled mostly by a lighter travel schedule than usual.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say thanks to all of you bloggers and tweeters out there. I always learn more from your feedback, than I do from my own writing. I am convinced however, that you’ve got to work both sides of the equation- ‘give to get’ so to speak. I can only hope my posts this week made a “small dent” in what I’m sure will be a perpetual debt balance I hold in the “‘bank of innovation and improvement ideas” fueled by  the blogosphere and Twitter-verse.

All in all, it was a good week. But today was most interesting, from the standpoint of a few Customer Service experiences that left a lot to be desired in my eyes. I’ll leave you with a few parting thoughts from one those interactions, which I’m sure will end up being fodder for some of next week’s posts.

Earlier this afternoon, my wife and I had to run three errands, all of which I estimated would take all but  an hour or two tops. One of those involved what I believed would be a quick run to the ATT store to re-evaluate my mobile WIFI data card and plan, and evaluate some new options I’d been thinking about. While the other two errands were less than perfect from a customer satisfaction perspective (I’ll spare you the details on these), the ATT experience was absolutely priceless in terms of providing new fodder on the topics of business improvement, and specifically “how not to run a customer service storefront”.

In today’s environment, many businesses elect to leave their “storefront” open for a variety of reasons, despite the myriad of online and mobile options available to their customers. It’s no easy decision for them to do this, and the pressures to go the other way and abandon them altogether, are more than compelling. So when they are left open, be it for product sales, or specialized service, I would imagine the company would want to extract maximum value from that decision. In fact, if I were the CCO of that company, my strategy for any local offices that were maintained (left open) would look something like this:

• Create the most welcoming and helpful environment for customers to shop and buy my products
• Make sure than any service I elect to provide in that office to existing customers (which, because they are provided in the local office itself, will be visible to my new shoppers/ future customers) is first rate and without blemish
• And where possible, begin to show existing customers (that are there for “service on their existing account”)  other channels that are available to them to help them (THE CUSTOMER) make their life a little easier, and perhaps even deliver a BETTER level of service than they had before (which would really be a true win win: make the customers life easier and lower the company’s cost at the same time!)

On this particular day, and at this particular store, ATT (and I rarely name a company when I rant on a CS experience!) failed miserably on all three counts. I was there to take care of several things with which I was having trouble taking care of online. I’ll spare you the details on the entire experience, but there was one aspect of the interaction that was truly mind-blowing for me.

As a backdrop to the story, I am a very heavy “data user” given the degree to which I travel.  I have always had an unlimited data plan, which I was “grandfathered” into  a few years back when ATT converted over to a plan that was less expensive, but capped the user at 5 gigs of data. While my usage is significant, I felt I was still undershooting the capped plan even in my heaviest months. So while the lower cost was appealing, I was still worried about the probability of me overshooting the cap, and what it would cost me if I did.

Specifically, my question was how much I had used in the past several months, whether or not I was operating below the 5 gig threshold, and in the months where I may have gone over, what the overage charge would have been. I tried to answer those questions on line but was unable to get a clear enough picture, so I figured I’d just stop in and get some one on one assistance in dealing with the problem. Some may say that this is a simple “self service” transaction, and maybe it is, but as someone who is fairly familiar with online and mobile channels, I found this one to be more difficult than usual and figured I would have more success in person. I had considered calling them by phone, but I had dealt with this store before and expected this to be relatively painless.

While at the counter, I began to describe my issue to the rep- an issue I would have expected them to have faced hundreds of times previously. After several quasi blank stares, I explained the problem again, this time illustrating on a piece of paper (complete with illustrative bar charts) exactly what I was trying to evaluate. Still no luck. And that’s where things went south.

Progressively watching the rep deal with this mathematical dilemma was  like watching a robot get short circuited in front of me, not to mention the other shoppers (prospective customers) that were in the store watching this unfold :

• First, we had to endure him searching several different screens for the usage pattern (10 minutes (felt like an hour)) for him to find two months worth of history). He tells me it would have been easier for me to do it online because the customer has access to more info. Nice try. I’d already tried to locate the usage history on the site and it was like looking in a maze. That’s why I was there to begin with.
• After concluding that waiting a for him to find another 2 months of history would have taken another 10 minutes, I decided to rely on the one month overage that occurred in December (which was about 1 gig over the 5 gig threshold) to begin to begin the process of  ascertaining what the overage “charge” would have been. Again, like a deer in the headlights…
• After watching another blank stare for a while, I just laid out the complex math problem for him as simply as I could (Cost per kb * the kb overage). Calculator in hand, he does the calc 3 or 4 times, and tells me (God honest truth) $20,000. I tell him that’s impossible (like I really should have had to!) because if I was on the 5Gig plan, I would have only paid $45, and while I did go 20% over, I seriously doubt the overage would have been $20 grand. That’s one heck of an overage fee, eh? I’m a bit impatient at this point, as he keeps recalculating and coming up with the same $20,000 answer, over and over again…
• Now for the climax of the story… he kind of gives up, shrugs his shoulders and says (you cant make this stuff up!!!), “well sir, I find it hard to believe too, but all I can tell you is that most people don’t look at their bills and just pay it. Sir, I’ve not had a question like this before.”

Now, had this been an agent with only a few days on the job, I may have cut him some slack. But this guy has been there more than a few years. I was rather speechless, as were the 3 people around us listening and watching this painful exchange. In a state of amazement (the emotion of frustration had left me by this point), I decided to leave and take care of this by phone, or perhaps by spending another hour or so back on the website trying to figure it out myself. But my confidence in this being a simple exercise was shot. All I was sure of, was that taking care of this myself  would be easier than enduring any more of the “in store” interaction.

And therein lies the “lessons learned” from my Friday afternoon at the ATT Store:

• If the company wanted to encourage self service transactions in lieu of “in store” transactions— mission accomplished
• My confidence in the website and mobile transactions being easier for the customer —0
• Confidence of the other shoppers that ATT’s “after the sale service” will be a good experience—- 0
• Likelihood of trusting another bill from ATT without being accompanied by a forensic accountant—Less than before I walked in the door.

Seriously though, I actually  do believe that ATT is the right vendor for me at the moment, given the alternatives, and my rather long and uneventful relationship thus far with the company. In fact, there are some unique things about their product that I can’t get from their competitor. So I will likely remain a customer despite the experience on this particular Friday afternoon. For now, I’m going to just chalk all this up to the guy just having a bad day, the CSR equivalent of a “senior moment” or perhaps a minor stroke!

But I believe the real story here is about the state of Customer Service in general, and how the industry is executing the transition to more self service technology. I genuinely don’t believe this is a problem unique to ATT.

There is nothing wrong with trying to shift customers to lower cost channels, be it for payment or general inquiry. But we appear to have swung so far to that end of the spectrum, that the staffs that are left to deal with specialized problems have forgotten what Customer Service is, and more importantly why it exists in the first place.

In the end, I think we will ultimately get all of this into equilibrium, but it is incumbent on CS leadership to make the transition to new technology, new channels and new processes a much more deliberate one. And that will be dependent on their ability to design processes, factoring in the customer experience at a level equal to, or greater than the cost savings involved. Not to say that cost savings aren’t paramount, but it cant be a trade off at the expense of the customer, all else being equal.

Win win solutions that enhance customer service, while still producing a much lower cost structure for the company, are out there. I am confident in saying that. It just wont happen inside of cultures like the one I experienced today. Let’s just hope he was having a bad day.

CC: ATT ???