Earlier this month, I wrote two customer service posts. In the first post, "if customer service is the new marketing," I wondered, if this is indeed the case — if front line interactions with customers are as or more important than any marketing campaigns we might devise, why is so much customer service still so awful. The second post featured comments from two bloggers who recently wrote about their own less than stellar customer experiences, Mir Kamin and TDavid.
Originally, I was going to wrap up the series with an "objective" analysis of the customer service problem, to see if we might be able to understand the macro factors causing it to be so bad as well as the unique micro factors in customer service excellence that perhaps we could model in our own attempts to improve.
Well, all that got thrown out the window last Saturday. Instead, I am going to share an "epiphany" I had on the whole topic after a most disastrous customer experience.
First the story. Saturday morning, December 21, my son and I were driving from our home in Mass. to our vacation home in Vermont. My husband had a few things to do at home so he was following later. We had a carful of stuff, including three of the family dogs. Just after we got on Route 89 — the one the runs the whole "width" of NH to Vermont, we got a flat and pulled off the highway. Not the breakdown lane, I got off the highway all together hoping to find a gas station. This was around noontime. I called my husband, who was still at home and then called AAA once I determined from my GPS that the nearest service station was more than three miles away.
And the comedy of errors began.
Call Number 1: Service Rep says that Southern NE AAA cannot help me so transfers me to Northern NE AAA. Except he doesn’t. He disconnects me.
Call Number 2 (immediately after): I connect with another rep, who really does try to help. I explain the problem and where I am — on the Hopkinton/Route 103 exit off 89 West in NH. Remember this part, it is important. She gives me a case number and promises to rush a crew out. I assume (yeah I know) that she knew how to do something that the first rep did not.
10-15 minutes after we hang up, inbound call: AAA trying to understand where we are. So I tell them, again. We hang up.
Then it dawns on me. They think we are in Hopkinton Massachusetts. Even though I was pretty clear.
So I call back. This is my Call Number 3 to AAA. It’s probably around 12:45, 1 pm by this time. New service rep. Finds the file. Confirms my suspicion that they are sending the crew to the wrong place. Connects me to AAA Northern NE, who cannot figure out where I am. Umm. Aren’t they supposed to know the roads? Anyway, a very long call later, we *think* someone is on the way.
Around quarter to two, though, I get a little nervous so I call back. Call Number 4 if you are still counting. Unfortunately, I still have to call Southern NE AAA because that’s the number on my card, and I neglected to ask for the Northern NE number when I was on the phone with them. Rep manages to transfer me, and I get the information that a wrecker is on the way from Manchester. For those of you who don’t know the area, that’s not far from where I broke down. Maybe 20 minutes. She also gives me the direct number to call, which comes in handy a little while later.
So we wait. And finally around 2:15… my husband and a local cop show up at the same time. Yes, you read that right. My husband made it from Hudson Mass. BEFORE AAA from Manchester NH. The police officer calls AAA to see what the scoop is, and while he is on his phone with them, AAA calls my phone. The wrecker is lost. This is probably about 2:30 or so.
WIth directions from the officer, the wrecker finally finds us, and the mechanic quickly fixes the flat. We’re on our way shortly after 3pm, with another 90 minutes to drive to reach the house. It was a brutal day, but that’s not why I share the story.
Here’s the epiphany. The people weren’t the customer service problem. Or at least not the worst of it. The process was the problem.
Each person was trying to help, but the system is set up so poorly that they just couldn’t provide a good customer experience. For whatever reason, Southern NE AAA can’t enter a problem in NH and have Northern NE AAA then pick up the call. And of course the whole mess was compounded by the fact that either the rep or the system made the initial faulty assumption that our Hopkinton was in Mass. I was also thrown by the fact that the reps — even the Northern NE AAA reps — we spoke to couldn’t figure out where we were. Don’t they publish maps??
The people sincerely wanted to help. But they couldn’t because the system got in the way. As a result, AAA failed miserably to efficiently deliver the roadside assistance service that is the reason I (and most people) joined AAA in the first place. And my son and I were stuck by the side of the road for three hours on a cold but clear December day.
So when we experience truly excellent customer service, either the system is set up to allow such great service — think Nordstrom or Zappos. Or an individual rises above the inadequacies of the process.
Shouldn’t we be aiming for the former? Systems and processes that allow customer facing employees –whether service, sales or marketing — to deliver the positive experiences we all want. I don’t tend to do big end-of-the-year posts, but if I were to wish for one thing for us as customers and marketers, it would be that: systems and processes that let us satisfy, not frustrate, the customer.
As for AAA, I do intend to contact the organization and share my concerns. I still think it is a great organization that delivers a valuable service.
I just wish it had done so a little better last Saturday.
A final postscript: The local police officer only found us because a fellow cop coming off duty called it in. It never occured to me (or apparently any of the many other cars that passed us) to call the police. He told me that you should always call the local police in an emergency, even something as simple as a flat tire. They often can get AAA or a wrecker out faster, and certainly we felt safer on the side of the road once we had the cruiser there.
Over the past week or so, a movement took shape on Twitter to support a fellow blogger Susan Reynolds recently diagnosed with a difficult-to-treat form of breast cancer. As a result of a comment she made about using frozen peas to relieve pain in the affected breast, folks started adding images of peas to their Twitter avatars in a show of support. I don’t know Susan, but many friends and acquaintances do, and I truly admire bloggers facing life-threatening diseases who write about their battle in an effort to help others.
So, I decided I would put up a new Twitter avatar. A decision made easier when the Queen of Spain’s talented husband offered to make pea avatars for people, meaning you wouldn’t be subjected to my sketchy graphics skills.
However, I decided I didn’t just want peas. I’ve written here before about a courageous woman fighting inflammatory breast cancer, Susan Niebur, also known as WhyMommy, who used her blog and the community of mommy bloggers to spread the word about this rare form of cancer.
I wanted my avatar to honor both Susans.
So today, in their honor and also in memory of friends and family lost to cancer, my Twitter avatar is a pink Y, for WhyMommy, wearing a pea necklace, for Susan Reynolds.
As for this blog, I will try to wrap up my three-part series on customer service before Christmas. After that, here’s what’s on deck: a report on the Photographic Memories program I just completed for HP, interviews with bloggers & a Ford exec about Ford’s On the Lot blogger program last summer and two new client projects with heavy social media elements.
And mark your calendars now for BlogHer Business April 3-4 in New York City, and New Comm Forum April 22-24 in Santa Rosa, California.
Yesterday, Forbes published its annual web celebrity list and last night, we had a bit of chatter on Twitter about it. I promised a post to further explain my thoughts on the list. Here goes.
There’s more than one problem here, so let’s start with the most obvious. Do we really need yet another web celebrity list?
If we truly believe what we say, that social media is about more than celebrity or rank, that it is about the democratization of media, that the long tail is just as important as the mass market, then we need to put our money where our mouths are.
We need to look deeper than the A-list. And not be fooled by lists like this one that merely scratch the surface of the richness of the blogosphere.
Now, I am not at all surprised that Forbes takes the easy way out by pandering to our culture of celebrity by creating a list that seems more appropriate to PEOPLE or the STAR. It’s a chance to show that they are more than just a stodgy mainstream business publication. Oooh Perez Hilton in Forbes… who would have thought….
Unfortunately, this perpetuates a misconception about what social media is, and what it can become. What we can become as a result.
Not only is that a real shame, but also it goes a long way to explaining why so many companies get it wrong when they engage. If we treat social media just like everything else, why should we expect that they’d "get it?" That they’d understand the fundamental differences between mass markets and the long tail, between bloggers and journalists. And so on.
The other problem is the gender imbalance. The Forbes list, like so many others, suffers from an over-representation of white middle class men. Only four women out of the 25. That’s 16%, for the math jocks out there. That doesn’t match the demographics of either the US population or Internet users.
The Forbes list is merely one among many that suffers from this problem. In the tweet-around last night, Chris Baskind forwarded me yet another recent list that purported to summarize the definitive blog posts of 2007. Just as bad. I counted 38 different authors (many of the same ones as in the Forbes list by the way) and 5 women. That’s about 13%.
Quite often, these lists mention the same women. Not to take away from their work and significant contributions, but there truly are more than a handful of women engaged in social media. And don’t get me started on the fact that the "definitive posts" post attributes CommonCraft’s great "RSS explained" video to Lee Lefever alone. No mention of business and life partner Sachi LeFever.
Now, we could say that these are stupid, lame lists, and why would women and minorities want to be on them anyway?
Unfortunately, that would miss the point of true equality.
True equality means that women and minorities should be adequately represented everywhere.
Certainly anything that claims to be a definitive summary of web influence.
Next week is shaping up to be pretty crazy — a new client, more bad
weather, I’m taking 3 kids to the Hannah Montana concert next Friday
and then we’re off to Vermont until the New Year — so let me take this
moment to wish you all a Merry Chrismakah and a Happy New Year.
I so appreciate that you continue to read Marketing Roadmaps and look forward to another year.
Chip Griffin published some lovely link bait on Media Bullseye today, and since I think contrarians who have the guts to publish under their real names should be rewarded, I’m biting
Chip’s thesis is that there are a number of social media "rules" that just don’t make sense. For the most part, I agree.
As I’ve written here many times, to argue that there is only one right way to do something is silly. So while I personally prefer blogs that allow comments and publish RSS feeds, I understand why companies and individuals might choose another path (#1 & 2). Likewise, I’m not terribly fond of anonymous blogs, but realize that there are some situations where anonymity is necessary.
Press releases… Amen, Chip, amen. As I’ve said before, and will again, it isn’t the press release form on its own that engenders the negativity (die press release die.) It is bad, irrelevant pitching. That said, there is a lot of goodness in making the news release more social media friendly and the folks at SHIFT among others deserve kudos for pushing the envelope ( #3 & 4).
Messages. Conversation. Audience. And so on. Chip makes some very good points, and I urge you to read his post with an open mind.
The one point upon which I really disagree is ghostwriting. I do not believe in ghostwriting for blogs. Sure we know that CEOs and celebrities don’t write their speeches. Talk show hosts don’t write all their own bits. And if you didn’t know this before the WGA strike, I hope you know it now.
If your CEO doesn’t want to blog, fine. There are other ways to bring his or her thoughts to the customers. And other ways for the company to engage. All of which are reasonable approaches.
Hiring someone to ghostwrite a CEO blog is not.
Other than that? Rules are made to be broken. Isn’t that what this social media stuff is all about anyway?
Over the last few weeks, I’ve done a number of new business calls (cross your fingers for me please). Naturally, social media comes up in pretty much every conversation, usually as a response to a request to explain blogging so I recently came up with a very simple way to explain the phases of social media engagement. I tried it on a call last night, and it really resonated with the folks I was speaking with, so I thought I’d share it with you.
Let’s call it the Four Ps of Social Media Engagement, with a nod to the good ole Four Ps of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
First, PREPARE. Before you do anything, you have to listen to your customers, find out what they care about, what they may already be saying about your company, competitors and industry issues. How? Monitor blogs.Listen to podcasts. Join the relevant social networks and groups.
Next, PARTICIPATE. Leave comments on blogs.Share personal experiences. Start twittering. Get to know the people in the community, and give them a chance to know you — as individuals and as representatives of your firms.
Then and only then, should you PUBLISH (a blog, podcast etc.) or PITCH (a program, a product). And of course, all the usual rules still apply here: relevant, authentic, appropriate, honest, respect, etc. etc.
You can start participating simultaneously with publishing a blog or doing blogger outreach, but it’s always better if the first few times people "meet" you, you don’t have an immediate objective. Give first, ask much much much later.
Also, notice that in both Ps, promotion is last, preparation first. And now think about social media programs that have failed. Usually because the promotion preceded the other phases, isn’t it?
I recalled that somewhere, somewhen, I had seen others use the Four Ps metaphor, so to give credit where credit is due, I did an all-tweet to make sure I didn’t unintentionally plagiarize someone. Steve Rubel, Rick Short, and Toby Bloomberg have all used it to discuss the content of a blog, not the phases of engagement. Nathan Gilliat’s Four Ps is somewhat similar to mine and is most likely the one I remembered. His post also links to some other alphabet soup posts for those who like that sort of thing. In that vein, I must give a nod to PR blogger David Wescott’s Three Rs for Blogger Relations and my own Five Cs of Viral Marketing. If you’ve done something similar, please add it in the comments, email or tweet me and I’ll add it to the list.
One company that is doing an excellent job of listening and responding to its small business customers lately is Intuit. I helped out at its Just Start promotion in South Station last month (on a purely volunteer basis), and just wanted to remind my readers that entries for the company’s Just Start contest end this Friday December 15th. If you have a new business idea, it’s worth taking the few minutes to enter the contest for a chance at the $50K prize.
Finally, don’t miss Dilbert has The Knack. Especially if you are an engineer or married to one.
Regular readers of this blog on Typepad (versus in a feed reader) will notice something different this morning. I deleted the badges for the AdAge Power 150 and Mack Collier’s Top Marketing Blogs.
I’ve never cared too much for blog ranking systems. Ranking systems are popularity contests, of one form or another, and just not my thing. I enjoy writing Marketing Roadmaps, am thrilled and honored that so many people get something out of it, and love reading your comments. This blog has never been and never will be about having a top ranking.
But I do follow the different systems so I understand what’s going on, and in all honesty, did get a kick out of being on the AdAge 150, albeit toward the back. I also think Mack Collier’s Top 25 Marketing Blogs was a good effort.
The problem is that the source data these, and other, ranking systems use is, well, rank. As in "strong or offensive in odor or taste." And it just doesn’t seem to get any better.
Consider the following:
Bloglines has no idea of the total number of readers who’ve subscribed to my feeds. Or at least it can’t count them, and delivers a different set of choices each time you subscribe. Yup, I tried it this morning, and first time I was offered my old atom and rdf feeds, which are still active with subscribers, and the second time I was offered my feedburner feed and the rdf feed. Feedburner on the other hand has no problem counting them up and getting to a total number. But the AdAge ranking just uses one of the numbers. Does that mean it under-reports my Bloglines subscribers? Or is Feedburner double counting somehow? Who knows, and really who cares? Bloglines is so cluttered with inactive or duplicate accounts, it doesn’t matter which of these numbers is the right one. There are just so many opportunities for error, Bloglines subscribers is totally suspect as a measure of readership.
Alexa. Man, I just don’t get Alexa. Or rather, I just don’t get how it has managed to become an important measure. It counts page views by people who’ve installed the Alexa toolbar. Hmm. It seems that if you use the Alexa toolbar yourself, your ranking goes up. Mine went up 29% since I installed it last week. Hmm.
Google Page Rank. What Google bestoweth, Google taketh away. Just ask all the Posties who had their page rank reset to zero. I’m not fond of Pay Per Post (or whatever it is called now), but something that can be artificially reset to penalize is not a terribly good basis for a ranking system. Too bad Google already apparently owns the world.
And Technorati. Ah Technorati. You have had your problems over the years, but until last weekend, you were fairly consistent. Marketing Roadmaps had been hovering somewhere between 450-550 in authority, and in the top 10,000 blogs, for quite some time, even before the W list pulled some women, including me, up a bit. Because it represented people linking into a blog, it was more dynamic than counting feed subscribers. And you could *see* what the ranking was based on. That’s why I thought Mack Collier’s list was more representative of influence than measures that use subscribers or hits. But this weekend, Technorati imploded. God only knows what they did to the algorithm, but suddenly Marketing Roadmaps’ authority is in the 200s and we are nowhere near the top 10,000. Why? The same blogs are still linking in. I can’t imagine that EVERYONE who had the blog in their blogroll suddenly decided to drop me. We don’t know why things changed. And that’s the problem with using Technorati as a ranking measure. Not a big deal if it is just your ego taking the hit. But what if you are using a ranking system to set ad rates for your blog? Yeah, not so good.
Don’t even get me started on subjective ratings. Certainly, they are important for understanding the influence of a blog or a blogger, but they are also situational and inherently biased. They do not belong in ranking systems.
I’ll continue to measure the health of this blog by your comments, visits and the general trending I see in Google Analytics and Feedburner. I applaud the folks who are trying to come up with systems to measure the influence of a blog or a blogger, but am not sure it is possible given the highly suspect data sources available to us.
So I’ve taken down the badges. Not sure I’ll ever put them back up.
As I wrote in my previous post, it seems we have a serious disconnect when it comes to customer service. At the same time we champion the "conversation" with the customer, the general level of customer service is decreasing. Sure, there are exceptions, but stories like Mir’s recent internet service "dis-service" and Mary’s lovely experience on American Airlines seem to be the norm.
I’ve been wondering, why? Do products just "suck more?" Are the occasional wonderful customer service stories really that WONDERFUL or is it that they just exceed our now much lower expectations?
What is customer service excellence?
First, let’s hear from two of the bloggers I used in my examples: Mir Kamin and TDavid.They both replied to my questions in email so I’ll let them speak for themselves. In part three, I’ll share some of my thoughts on the subject.
Mir:
"I think the norm of shoddy customer service,and yes, in a lot of ways I do think it’s become the norm) is yet another symptom of our "fast food society." Look, I’ve said it over at Cornered Office (and somewhat more obliquely, at Woulda Coulda Shoulda), but I’ll spell it out right here: I was on a plan that only cost $6.95/month. I’m not saying I necessarily DESERVED to get screwed, but honestly, what did I expect for that amount of money? We want it faster and cheaper and as a consumer body, THAT is what we demand, rather than quality and courtesy, sadly.
That said, lesson learned over here, bigtime. I can make all the excuses I want — they promised me service, I bought that plan when I was first starting out and was worried I couldn’t afford more, whatever. I’m paying a lot more for my new service, and at least this has taught me that it’s worth every penny.
The businesses that triumph in America right now are the ones that can do it the cheapest and the most conveniently. That’s why the Walmarts continue to thrive while the heart-and-soul community mom-and-pop stores struggle. You can’t be cheap, convenient AND personal. It just doesn’t add up. And most of us simply cannot afford to go top-shelf for most things.
Until we as a consumer body start making a lot of noise and putting our dollars where our mouths are, it’s not going to change.
Think about the best customer service you’ve heard lately. I’ll bet it was the Zappos story of the woman who not only ended up having them basically white-glove a return for her, but sent her flowers in condolence because when she was talking to the rep she mentioned that her mother had died. Zappos is committed to customer service and they do it better than almost anybody out there, right now. They are also INCREDIBLY expensive. They have to be.
Now. All of that said, I think a VAST IMPROVEMENT in customer service is possible without spending billions of dollars, and that’s to encourage CSRs to act like they care. In my situation, a lot of my ire could’ve been circumvented had the CSRs involved simply apologized and/or seemed less apathetic. That doesn’t take that much time and it would’ve made a world of difference. Maybe in today’s "GIMME" society "the customer is always right" is an impractical goal, but when did we just plain stop being NICE to the customer?"
TDavid:
Do products just "suck more?"
"Either it’s very coincidental or there is a direct correlation between more ad-supported software and services and negative customer experiences.
Somewhere along the line beta and release software and, as in the Xbox 360 case, hardware have merged. This has noticeably lowered the overall quality of products and services on a wider scale. In some cases these days customers are being expected to become unwilling beta testers and sometimes even paying for the privilege like the Xbox 360.
It’s one thing to not be charged in a beta test, it’s another to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars and be told the only solution is out of warranty repair or buying more of the same faulty hardware.
Microsoft in their much publicized Red Rings of Death warranty extension didn’t cover another common problem: game/DVD disc read errors. So if you have a machine that’s older than one year and doesn’t read discs any more, they’ll expect you to pay to get that fixed or you’ll need a third party warranty.
On the software side, the amount of time new/upgrade versions are being turned around seems to be shortening so that just when you start to get to an acceptable level of usefulness and value, you’re being asked to pay for a new version and rinse, repeat."
Are the good stories really wonderful or do they just exceed our now much lower expectations?
"Expectation levels are lower now, but there are still some positive stories out there. Harder to find, but they’re out there.
These days if a company ships something that runs on the computer without causing installation migraines or turning our computing experience into slow-mo that’s cause for joy, where that should be expected. Demanded.
We’re putting up with more negative customer experiences in web 2.0 than we should. Sites, services and mashups being engineered poorly that if they become popular won’t meet demand without major restructuring. Some services have come to the rescue like Amazon S3 to address these needs and that’s a good thing, but I see a lot of web 2.0 headstones over the next couple years that couldn’t make a viable business plan out of being ad-supported. VCs are already pulling life support systems, flatline imminent.
How funny is that? If we paid to access comics — and couldn’t because the site was down — would we receive some proportional refund of the time we couldn’t access?"
What is customer service excellence?
"For web services: fast response time, good, reliable uptime (at least 99.5%). Essential for paid services.
For all services/products: Minimum amount of time and hassle solving issues and problems. Being treated like an important asset of the business rather than a nuisance. In the case of faulty workmanship on a product, fixing it with as minimal hassle as possible. Companies that recognize and reward loyalty through better deals on future business being conducted, sharing income from referral sales and creative promotions are providing a valuable service.
And good customer service includes having an easy to find telephone number on the company website with an operator on the other side — preferably without having to navigate through a machine — that speaks clearly and doesn’t resort to some canned script to answer questions.
Bad customer service is forcing customers to email their responses, fill out a form or navigate through some confusing knowledge base and wait who knows how long only to be sent a scripted response. Or being told you have to pay $$$ just to talk to a human being about the problem installing the software or hardware you just purchased."
Thanks, Mir and TDavid for giving us such meaty food for thought. Tomorrow, I’ll share some of mine.
By now most marketing and PR bloggers have heard about the new Blog Council – created by Andy Sernovitz, former head of WOMMA, 12 big company members, etc. etc. In fact, most marketing and PR bloggers have already written about it and I don’t have much to add. I’m going to reserve judgment until we see what the Council actually does.
However, I do have one comment, which is that I am once again disappointed by an industry group’s speaking roster. So far the Council appears to have had nine members-only presentations of some sort, with 13 speakers, some from vendors, some from member companies. 10 men (77%), 3 women (23%). Better than some recent events, but still not good enough.
We have to do better than this. I hope the Blog Council does.
