Don't let icebergs sink your service ship

Note: I originally wrote this article in 2009. It didn’t make it over to my recently upgraded website, so I’ve updated and republished it.

Getting the first shipment of your new book is an exciting time for any author. It was definitely a thrill for me to open my box of Service Failure books and see the result of a lot of hard work.

I was excited to hold my first book, blissfully unaware of the iceberg.

I brought a copy to my parents when I visited them that weekend. It was my Dad that made the discovery during my visit. Pages were falling out of the book.

We encounter problems like this every day in the business world. The challenge we face is determining whether it is an isolated incident or just the tip of the iceberg. 

Isolated incidents can and will happen. They’re unfortunate, but you can generally recover quickly. 

Icebergs will sink your service ship. That’s because the real problem is unknown. Just like a real iceberg, the hidden part of the customer service iceberg is larger and more dangerous.

Was my parents’ defective book an isolated incident or the tip of an iceberg? Here’s the three step approach I used to address the issue:

Step 1: Don’t assume it’s an isolated incident

It’s too easy to dismiss a problem as an isolated incident. Fix the problem, make the customer happy, and move on.

Rude employee? So sorry, we’ll talk to him. Food not cooked to your liking? Dessert is on us. It took too long to answer your call? We’re experiencing a temporary spike in call volume. 

But what if it’s not an isolated incident? 

Believe me, I wanted the book I gave my parents to be the one and only copy with its pages falling out. It would certainly make things easy. In fact, it would be a relief knowing that the sole defective book went to someone I knew so I could easily replace it.

There’s a simple question I ask whenever I encounter a problem like this:

“Can the same problem exist in other places?”

The first thing I did when I got back home from visiting my parents was check all of my books. Sure enough, every single one of them had the same defect that caused pages to fall out. I had found an iceberg!

Step 2: Find the root cause

As counter-intuitive as it seems, you should not immediately try to fix the customer’s problem when you spot an iceberg. 

Why?

Let’s imagine I sent my parents a new book to replace the defective one. How do I know the pages in the new book won't also fall out? I can’t be assured they won’t get another defective copy until I understand the problem. 

Now imagine you are working with a customer who isn’t quite so understanding as your dear old Mom and Dad. Sending out a second defective product will only compound their frustration and hurt your reputation. You can’t fix things for the customer until you solve the problem.

You should always ask this question when you encounter an iceberg:

What caused the problem?

I immediately called my editor at AMACOM once I realized all my books had the same defect. He had one in his office and found the same problem with his copy. He promised to look into it and get back to me right away.

My editor got back to me just a few hours later. They had located the source of the problem. Not all books were affected, but they couldn’t tell how many. As a precaution, they were going to reprint all of the books. 

It was an expensive move, but the right one.

Step 3: Provide proactive customer service

I was grateful to learn about the problem from my Dad. He was able to serve as a customer service canary, an early warning system that alerted me to the problem before it became too widespread.

Learning about icebergs and fixing them quickly allows you to proactively serve your customers. You can reach out to the people affected and offer solutions that minimize hassle. You can also prevent future customers from experiencing the same issue. In the long run, it’s a lot easier and cheaper to fix a small problem now than a large problem later.

It’s always good to ask this question when you find the root cause of a customer service iceberg:

Who else is affected?

Understanding the potential scope of the problem allows you to create a proactive customer service strategy. One big concern with Service Failure was that Amazon had also received an early shipment and had used it to fulfill all of their pre-orders. The good news was that I knew many of the people who had pre-ordered the book and could contact them personally. The bad news was that I didn’t know them all.

I worked with my publisher, AMACOM, to devise a proactive customer service strategy once we understood the scope of the problem. Retailers like Amazon have their own generous return policies that allowed customers to return or exchange defective books, but I wanted to get out ahead of the problem as much as possible. 

Here’s what we did:

• Several people, including myself, double-checked the new batch of books to ensure there were no problems. There weren’t.

• AMACOM authorized their customer service department to send out a replacement book to anyone who had received a defective one. The customer didn’t have to return the defective copy. This was a critical step since it would save customers time and effort if they went this route.

• I personally contacted everyone I knew who had pre-ordered a book from Amazon. I told them how to quickly check for the defect since it wasn’t immediately obvious. I also gave them instructions for getting a replacement copy from AMACOM if they needed one.

• I wrote a post on my blog, “What to do if your copy of Service Failure is a Service Failure” so people I didn’t know personally might easily find instructions for getting a replacement copy.

• I followed up with anyone I knew who received a defective copy to ensure their replacement copy arrived in good condition.

This was a lot of extra effort. It was also much better than potentially disappointing many more readers. 

What will you do the next time you encounter a customer service problem? It may just be an isolated incident, but beware of icebergs!

Update

I learned a lot of lessons from working with a publisher on my first book. Several years later, I republished the book myself under a new title, Getting Service Right.

It was a chance for me to take control of the publishing process to avoid these types of printing issues. And, if something did go wrong, I had control over service recovery.

You can read more about the story in the introduction to Getting Service Right.

Do you have a customer service canary?

Coal miners used to depend on canaries as an early warning system for poisonous gases such as carbon dioxide. Miners knew they’d better get out quickly if the canary became sick or died. 

Companies that provide outstanding service have their own version of the coal mine canary. They use early-warning systems to detect and solve small problems before they become big ones.

Credit card companies provide a familiar example. They employ complicated algorithms to detect fraudulent charges. I recently got a call from my credit card company asking me to confirm a suspicious transaction. It wasn’t one that I recognized, so they immediately cancelled the card and sent a new one overnight. 

This was a tiny hassle, but nothing compared to the expense and annoyance that would have resulted if a credit card thief had run amok.

In his book, High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service, Micah Solomon calls this “anticipatory customer service.” Here are some of the major benefits of anticipating problems and solving them before customers notice:

• Improve customer loyalty by saving them time
• Avoid the negative word of mouth that comes with repeated service failures
• Save money proactively fixing small problems instead of reacting to large ones

Customer service canary examples

Call Monitoring. Call centers can use call data to spot trends. For example, a software company shares recorded calls with its development team so they know what types of questions customers are asking about new product releases. This allows the software team to quickly identify and fix bugs.

Seed Lists. Many direct marketers maintain a list of recipients who can provide feedback on the timeliness and condition of deliveries. This list, called a seed list, can help spot problems in mailings. Netflix takes this a step further by periodically sending customers a quick email survey to ask when a particular video was received or sent.

Google Alerts. Automated services like Google Alerts can help you monitor online mentions of your brand, a particular product, or even trends that may affect your organization. I recently learned about a nice review of my book, Service Failure, from Portland Book Review thanks to Google Alerts. 

Here’s a customer service canary for personal use. I keep a list of anything that I’m waiting for, whether it’s a return call from a client, a package from a vendor, or an email from a colleague to confirm a meeting. I review this list once a day for anything that is overdue so I can follow-up quickly before the delay becomes too much of a problem.

Unlike coal miners, don’t run away

It’s hard to imagine coal miners ignoring the ominous sign of a dead canary and continuing their work. Unfortunately, this is exactly what many companies do when it comes to customer service. The warning signs are there, but they get ignored.

When the alarm sounds, you have to do something.

My friend Jason Marcus works at Main Street Hub, a company that helps local businesses manage social media. He recommends actively engaging customers who send out early warning signals by complaining online.

“Through monitoring you can gain a better understanding of your brand perception, and also get great feedback about what you're doing well and what you could be doing better. However, managing online reputation doesn't stop at monitoring. The best companies engage with reviewers.”

Marcus told me about one of his clients, a hotel that received a three-star review on Yelp. The guest felt the hotel was great overall but her room was too noisy. The hotel manager replied to the review by thanking the guest for her feedback and explained that they’d be happy to put her in a quieter room on her next visit. 

Here was her reply:

“I wish every hotel manager was as professional and courteous as you were to me just now. It's what will bring us back :-)"

The guest also upgraded her review to four stars!

Engaging the guest on Yelp helped the hotel beyond earning a higher rating. The guest’s feedback represents valuable information that can be used to prevent more unhappy guests and avoid low Yelp reviews in the future.

Here are just a few ways the hotel might prevent future noise complaints:

• Market the hotel as having a lively atmosphere (a.k.a. noisy)
• Ask guests about their room preferences at time of reservation or check-in
• Provide ear plugs in some of the noisier rooms along with a card that says:

“Our local nightlife can be quite vibrant, so we’ve provided these ear plugs for your comfort. Please inform the front desk if there’s anything else we can do to make your stay more enjoyable.”

Finding your own customer service canaries

Here are my suggestions for finding your own customer service canaries:

1. Identify your most critical customer interactions.
2. Ask yourself, “What could go wrong?”
3. Put a canary in place to signal any problems.

For example, I recently upgraded my website. The transition was generally smooth but I did experience a few problems connecting my new website with Feedburner. (Feedburner is the service I use to broadcast my blog via RSS, Twitter, and email.) 

Broadcasting my blog is critical so obviously it would be a problem if my blog didn’t get sent to subscribers. That’s why I set myself up as a subscriber too so I would know if the blog came through (my canary). When Murphy’s Law kicked in and my first blog post on the new website didn’t get broadcast, I quickly realized it and was able to correct the problem.

I’m still working out a few bugs with the new website, but at least I have my canaries to let me know where they are!

Note: No canaries were harmed while writing this blog post.

The top 5 viral service failure videos

In customer service, going viral usually means something went wrong and people are mocking you.

An extra dimension is added when that viral service failure is captured on video. In some cases, we actually see the events unfolding. In other cases, the video re-caps the service failure in a way that enlightens and entertains.

Here are my top five viral service failure videos. Agree? Disagree?  

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#5 Domino's Pizza Prank (2009) 

Story: Two employees at a Domino’s Pizza franchise thought it would be great fun to film one of them defiling customer orders while the other narrates. Though the two insisted the video was a joke, they soon found themselves fired and sitting in jail.

Viral Factor: The original video was removed, presumably by the two pranksters. That hasn’t stopped the video being posted by others, with at least one posting attracting over a million views.

Lesson Learned: If you absolutely, positively must do something this stupid, don't film it.

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#4  Dude, don’t touch my junk! (2010)

The Story: The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) implemented new airport security procedures in late 2010 that triggered a wave of passenger complaints. Many travelers felt harassed, humiliated, and physically violated. John Tyner surreptitiously videoed his TSA experience and posted what’s now known as the “Dude, don’t touch my junk!” video.

Viral Factor: The incident attracted national media attention and the video has been seen over one million times on YouTube. 

Lesson Learned: Excessive focus on compliance without compassion won’t win you many fans.

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#3 Sleeping Comcast Technician (2006)

The Story: A Comcast technician falls asleep while waiting on hold with his own company! The homeowner records the video and posts it online. Mockery ensues.

Viral Factor: The original YouTube video has attracted 1.7 million views.

Lesson Learned: If the system is broken, your employees won’t succeed.

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#2 FedEx Package Tosser (2011)

The Story: A FedEx driver was caught on surveillance video tossing a package over a fence. The owner posted the video on YouTube. The worst part, according to the owner, was he was at home when the package was delivered.

Viral Factor: The original video has been viewed nearly 9 million times on YouTube.

Lesson Learned: Always serve customers like the world is watching.

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#1 United Breaks Guitars (2009)

Story: United Airlines refused to take responsibility after baggage handlers broke Dave Carroll’s guitar. Carroll sought revenge by posting a humorous music video to YouTube.

Viral Factor: More than 13 million people have watched the video. The experience led Carroll to write a book by the same name and start a company called Gripevine.

Lesson Learned: When you're wrong, fix it and fix it fast.

Do your service channels have multiple personalities?

How many personalities do your service channels have?

The proliferation of multiple service channels is making customer service harder for companies to manage. The task is even more daunting when each channel has its own distinctive personality.

Not all of these personalities are good.

I recently wrote about a service experience at American Airlines where my suitcase was delayed. Every person I encountered was friendly, but they were all very different. It wasn’t just a product of the employees’ individual personalities. Each service channel seemed to have its own vibe:

Baggage Counter. These folks have seen it all. Nice, but curt.

800 Number. The call center agents were friendly but perfunctory.

Twitter. The American Airlines twitter personality is light, engaging, and helpful.

Customers will take your channels’ personalities into account when deciding how to contact your company. For many organizations, this may be one more way you are training your customers to complain via Twitter.

What causes these multiple personalities?

One culprit is channel ownership. A 2012 study by Ragan found that only 19 percent of companies had their customer service department manage or co-manage their social media channels.

Who does manage social media? The list of top five departments is very revealing:

1. Marketing – 70%
2. PR – 69%
3. Corporate Communications – 49%
4. Advertising – 26%
5. Customer Service – 19%

See a trend? The data suggests that most companies still operate under a philosophy that social media drives sales but customer service is a cost center.

Many companies also look at traditional one-to-one customer service channels as being very different from one-to-many. This isn’t totally unreasonable. That call where your employee was a total jerk to your customer was only recorded for quality and training purposes and not for broadcasting over the internet.

Of course, this short sighted approach misses a very important detail. People still have the ability to share their version of the story via with their own online networks. Want proof? Check out the Twitter hash tag #comcastsucks.

The fix to this problem is changing the corporate philosophy to firmly realize that customer service drives sales. Those one-to-one interactions are all preserving sales and creating future ones.

Another reason service channels can have multiple personalities is nobody has taken the time to define what outstanding customer service looks like for our organization. A recent survey I conducted revealed that only 62 percent of companies had created their own definition of outstanding service.

It's no wonder each channel does it's own thing without a single owner or a unifying definition to guide them.

Small business gets this right more often

Unifying service channel personalities is one area where small businesses have a huge leg up over larger organizations. The smaller scale makes it easier for one person, often the owner, to infuse his or her personality into each channel. In many cases, the owner is also primarily responsible for each channel.

Antica Trattoria is my favorite Italian restaurant in San Diego. Their food is outstanding and their service is warm and personal. They also have consistent personalities across all of their channels.

Chef and owner Francesco Basile personally manages their social channels. He runs their Facebook page and responds to reviewers on Yelp. If you dine there, you are likely to meet him while he's mingling with guests. Basile’s hands-on approach translates to a consistent feeling no matter how you interact with the restaurant.

How can larger companies emulate this? By doing the same things they do to scale up other parts of their business from small to large.

1. Codify it so your organization’s implicit understandings become explicit.
2. Measure it we can gain a clear picture of how well we’re doing.
3. Manage it so we can ensure we’re heading in the right direction.

Not coincidentally, these three steps match the first three steps an organization must take to create a customer-focused culture.

Book Review: Delight Your Customers

Buy on Amazon

What's the difference between good and outstanding customer service?

Steve Curtin provides an answer in his new customer service book, Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary.

A little disclosure before I get started. Delight Your Customers is published by AMACOM which also published my book, Service Failure. We even had the same editor. Steve and I discovered this connection after we already knew each other, but it's still important to mention. I'm also happy to report I really enjoyed his book. Otherwise, this would have been awkward.

Now, back to the book.

Delight Your Customers focus on the difference between an employee’s job function and their job essence. Job function consists of the various tasks an employee must complete or the procedures they follow. Job essence is the little extra that delights customers.

Curtin argues that most employees have a good understanding of their job function but are inconsistent at mastering their job essence.

I started looking for examples of this after reading the book and found one almost immediately in the shoe department at my local Macy’s. My wife, Sally, wanted to buy some new shoes and I was assigned to be the designated bag holder. The shoe section in a department store is typically chaotic. This scene was no different.

I had to wait awhile to take this picture without anyone in the frame. The store was very busy, I don't like sharing images of unsuspecting people.

I observed many sales associates executing their job functions. They checked inventory for shoes that customers requested, retrieved shoes from the stockroom, and rang up purchases.

Michael was the sales associate who helped Sally. He stood out because he clearly embraced his job essence. He addressed all of his customers by name and asked a few questions to build rapport. Michael used his sense of humor to break the ice. He even drew me into the conversation when he noticed me waiting off to the side.

The amazing thing was Michael was able to do this while interacting with a constant stream of customers. I know from experience that this is tiring work and exhaustion was evident on the faces of all his co-workers. Michael, on the other hand, seemed to draw energy from the constant customer interactions.

In Delight Your Customers, Curtin describes three characteristics that nearly all extraordinary customer service experiences have in common. It was interesting to see how these characteristics fit the service that Michael provided.

Characteristic #1: The service reflects the job essence. Michael was clearly focused on helping his customers have a good experience finding shoes they would love. This went well beyond the job function of checking inventory, retrieving stock, and ringing up sales.

Characteristic #2: It’s voluntary. Michael added his own flair to the basic job functions. For example, sales associates asked for customers’ names when they went to check on inventory so they could call out the customers’ names when they had retrieved their shoes. Michael took this a step further by finding Sally in the shoe department rather than just calling out her name from the counter. He repeatedly addressed her by name as he helped her find some shoes.

Characteristic #3: It’s free. Sally didn’t have to pay any extra for Michael’s outstanding service. In fact, it was his job essence that prevented her from giving up after the first few pairs of shoes weren't quite right. Macy's gained a sale due to Michael's enthusiastic service.

It was fun to see how mastering job essence can make such a huge impact on service. Delight Your Customers does a great job of providing practical examples and tips to help customer service professionals master the essence of their own jobs.

Delight Your Customers is available as a paperback or e-book from Amazon  and Barnes & Noble.

Welcome to the new Toister Performance Solutions website

You may notice a few changes if you visit the Toister Performance Solutions website with any regularity.  I've just migrated from the Squarespace 5 platform to Squarespace 6.

If you're not familiar with Squarespace, I can tell you that I'm a huge fan of their product and an even bigger fan of their outstanding customer service.

Here's a very brief rundown of what's new:

Mobile-friendly

Most people visiting the Toister Performance Solutions website are reading my Next Level Customer Service blog. Many of these visitors are using a mobile device such as a phone or tablet. In fact, the number of mobile visitors has increased by 50% from this time a year ago.

The old website wasn't optimized for mobile. The new one is. It looks much, much better. 

If you are reading this post on your PC, try scanning the QR Code below wih your mobile device to view the mobile version.

Updated Look

It was definitely time for a new look. The new website is cleaner and simpler. It makes it easier for people to learn what Toister Performance Solutions does and determine if we might be able to work together. 

Here's how the old and new homepages compare: 

The old site:

The new site: 

Easier Conversations

The new website makes it easier to engage in conversations by integrating Disqus into the blog. Disqus provides far more options for interaction than the commenting system on the old site. 

There is one small drawback. Implementing Disqus hides all of the comments from the previous system. I'm working on a way to add them back in. 

Want to try it out? Share, like, comment, star, or follow this post using the links below.  

A few final notes... 

1. You can subscribe to this blog via email by using the "Get this Blog Via Email" box on the right side of the screen.
2. There are bound to be errors despite extensive proofreading and testing. Please let me know if you find one.

The lazy customer service manager

I’m feeling a bit lazy. My mission is to write this blog post, but I really don’t want to invest the effort necessary to write a good one. The way I see it, I have three options:

1. Republish something I’ve already written for someone else
2. Embed a funny YouTube video that somehow makes a point about service
3. Draw inspiration from someone else.

Let’s go with option 3 because I already have someone in mind: The Lazy Customer Service Manager. Before I go on, please excuse any snarkiness. I’m too lazy to edit that out today.

The Lazy Customer Service Manager: A Profile

I’ve met a lot of customer service managers. The great ones work tirelessly to help their team deliver world class service and the results speak for themselves.

The lazy ones work tirelessly to find shortcuts. Most of those shortcuts don’t work. Their results speak for themselves too.

Here are a few examples.

Perfect Attendance Awards

The idea behind this motivational gimmick is that people need extra motivation to come to their lousy jobs on a regular basis. This seems to be especially popular in call centers. Perhaps this is because very few people have ever said, “You work in a call center?! Is it as glamorous as it sounds?”

The lazy manager thinks, “I know how to solve our absenteeism problem. We’ll create a perfect attendance award where everyone who has perfect attendance for a month will be entered into a drawing. The winners of the drawing will get to spin a prize wheel for a chance to win fabulous prizes such as candy, gift cards, and (ironically) a day off with pay.”

That was a real example. I so wish I was making this up.

Great customer service managers take a slightly different approach. They focus on making the workplace a great place to be so people will naturally want to come to work. 

Suggestion Boxes

There are a number of reasons why the lazy manager will put out a suggestion box. Perhaps the manager read an article somewhere that the best companies ask their employees for input. Maybe Office Depot is having a sale on suggestion boxes. It could be that the manager is just looking for a way to get employees to stop complaining directly to him. The possibilities are endless.

One lazy manager I knew thought he was enlightened when he promised to post a written response to each suggestion on the team bulletin board. This practice quickly stopped when the vast majority of suggestions turned out to be complaints about working conditions, co-workers, and even the boss.

Again, I really wish I was making this up.

Great customer service managers skip the suggestion box and talk to their employees on a regular basis. They recognize that a true “open door” policy requires them to walk through their door and create an environment where employees will be comfortable enough share their candid opinions.

Incidentally, I did Google “suggestion box” as part of my exhaustive research for this blog post. Sharlyn Lauby has a good post on her HR Bartender blog called 7 Considerations for Suggestion Box Programs.

The Angry Memo

Serious customer service issues can sometimes arise. The lazy manager often addresses these issues via an angry memo that’s emailed to everyone on the team or perhaps posted on a bulletin board. Typically, only one or two people on the team are actually to blame, but the lazy manager finds it safer to get everyone involved rather than speak privately with the people who really need to hear the message.

One example comes from a restaurant in Boston where the owner allegedly posted this memo on an employee bulletin board in response to a bevy of customer complaints:

“You are the LOSERS!!!” … “Change or be changed. Please, don’t force your termination for the holidays.”

You can read more about the story on Patrick Maguire’s I’m Your Server Not Your Servant blog.

Great customer service managers skip the angry memo and constructively address issues as soon as they arise. For example, a customer complaint might be treated as a learning experience and met with a discussion on ways to improve service quality.

What are other characteristics of a lazy customer service manager?

Some might call this last part lazy since I’m basically asking you to finish this post for me by leaving your comments. I prefer to call it crowd-sourcing.

Whatever the term, please do share your own examples of signs that a customer service manager is being lazy.

They have a job, so why do they blog?

There are a lot of people who actively share their thoughts about customer service via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other online platforms. Most of them, including me, are consultants, speakers, or authors. It stands to reason that people like us would actively share our voice online. After all, we’re trying to get the word out.

But what motivates people who already have a job working for someone else?

To learn the answer, I reached out to four internal employees who are all prolific contributors to the online discussion about customer service.

Jenny Dempsey and Jeremy Watkin

Jenny and Jeremy are part of the customer service team at Phone.com. Jenny is the Customer Service Supervisor and self-described Phone.com mascot while Jeremy is the Director of Customer Service. 

The two of them embody the spirit of customer service on their fabulous Communicate Better Blog. It features insights into the service they provide their own customers at Phone.com plus examples from other companies and frequent guest posts. They also Tweet from @commbetterblog.

Jenny and Jeremy told me they are active online because it helps them learn, it adds purpose to their work, and helps them define their service culture at Phone.com.

Learning

Jeremy: “When you stop and think about it, everyone has customers and there is customer service both good and bad going on all around us. What an amazing opportunity to learn! Selfishly, this exercise helps me be a better husband, father, employee, coworker, boss and friend to my customers as I learn to serve better.“

Jenny: "I do this because I want to help others in the best way I possibly can. I want to learn and grow and be totally awesome at helping others!"

Purpose

Jenny: “Writing this blog gives me a sense of purpose at my job and in life (sounds cheesy, but it does). It opens my eyes to the fact I’m doing something bigger than just answering a call or writing an email. I am ridiculously inspired on a daily basis.”

Culture

Jeremy: “I do want to help build a customer-centric culture at Phone.com and find that this is a fantastic way to inspire our customer service team. I talk a lot about "awesome" customer service. Still others on our team are excited to contribute guest posts and comments about what they are learning about customer service. Even more exciting is when people in other departments in our company read our blog and talk about how they are changing the way they approach their customers.”

Annette Franz (Gleneicki)

Annette serves as Director, Customer Experience Management Strategy at Confirmit.

Her entertaining and informative CX Journey blog focuses on customer experience. She’s not afraid to be provocative and I like that I agree with her perspective most of the time, but not always. She often uses personal stories backed by research to make her point and also includes guest bloggers on a regular basis. Annette also Tweets from @cxjourney and @annettefranz.

I wasn’t surprised to learn Annette’s top two reasons for sharing her thoughts online since it’s evident in her style, but she has several more great reasons too.

• I love to write!
• I’m passionate about what I do.
• I’m building my personal brand.
• Blogging is a way to share my learnings and experiences from the last 20+ years.
• While there are many of us who do what I do, I think there is power in numbers. The more of us who try to get the message out, the better.
• It allows me to help others that I might not otherwise meet through my corporate role/position; from students to start-ups to corporate practitioners, I’ve met, answered questions for, and provided guidance one-on-one to people who follow me on social media and are regular readers of my blog.
• It’s a great way to meet like-minded individuals and to learn from others.

Bill Quiseng

Bill is the Resort Manager at Marriott’s Ko Olina Beach Club in Oahu, Hawaii.

If you wanted to use Twitter as tool for keeping up with the latest customer service trends, you could follow Bill Quiseng (@billquiseng) and do quite well. That’s because Bill is constantly sharing and re-Tweeting great customer service ideas and content. He also does an amazing job populating his Facebook page with interesting topics and discussions too.

Bill views sharing customer service lessons with others as a way of paying it forward for the all the great mentoring he’s received in his career.

“I really have enjoyed my 35 years in the hospitality industry, almost all of that time in the luxury resort segment. I have been mentored by some of the very best general managers of luxury resorts. And those GM's all taught the same key lesson:

With only slight differences in the product or setting between our resort and our competitors, the key differentiators are in the personalized service our front line associates deliver and the overall guest experience we create through their collective guest interactions.

I write to serve as a mentor to those who want to perfect their delivery of the customer experience. As a person reads each blog post, they learn a little more, until over time, they become masters of customer service. And that is how I'd like to "pay it forward" for a lifetime career of having learned from some of the very best in delivering an exceptional customer experience. 

These people are real pros

Writing a blog post like this is often a numbers game. You ask a lot of people you’d like to hear from knowing only a handful will respond.

This group is different. These four are the only people I reached out to because I knew they’d reply quickly and thoughtfully. They’re all true customer service professionals whose passion for sharing and helping others is authentic, and I truly appreciate their contributions.

Three terrific thought leader panels from ACCE 2013

ICMI's ACCE 2013 conference for call center professionals was a customer service extravaganza and a terrific learning experience (see my re-cap here). 

One of the best features of the conference was the Thought Leaders Discussion Table. It consisted of a rotating group of panelists who engaged in fifteen minute, freeform discussions on a variety of call center topics ranging from technology to social media. 

I was fortunate enough to moderate the first three panels:

Panel #1
Panelists included Tiffany LaReau of Human Numbers, Todd Hixon of Intuit, and Bob Furniss of Bluewolf. They kicked things off right with a great discussion on social media.

Click here if you can't see the video.

Panel #2
Panelists included Katy Wild of Freeman, Ben Paganelli of VIA Unlimited, and Lou Paduto of Satori Software. Incidentally, Lou and I will be co-facilitating a webinar on reducing call center stress on Thursday, June 20.

Click here if you can't see the video.

Panel #3
Panelists included Clare Wenham of New Voice Media, Tristan Barnum of Telcentris, Ruben Moffett of TantaComm, and Dave Bethers of TCN. And yes, astute readers will recognized that a story from Clare Wenham helped inspire my post on how companies are training customers to complain via Twitter.

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How a corporate policy crushed service

We often concentrate on the individuals serving us when we think about service quality. But what happens when dumb corporate policies hinder employees’ ability to serve?

This is one of those stories. 

My wife, Sally, recently bought a Tumi briefcase. They’re more expensive than typical bags, but they have a reputation for outstanding quality.

Unfortunately, this bag didn’t live up to that reputation as a zipper pull tore off after just a few weeks.

Sally brought her bag back to the Tumi store so it could be repaired under warranty. She was told it could take up to four weeks because they had to ship the bag back to their repair center in New York.

Losing her briefcase for a month wasn’t an option, so Sally spoke to the store manager in hopes of finding a more acceptable alternative.

Could they give her a loaner bag? No.
Could they give her a new bag? No.
Could Sally get the bag repaired locally and send Tumi the bill? No.

These policies were clearly created by a spreadsheet jockey. They appeared to be the model of efficiency from an aggregate, corporate point of view while completely missing how nonsensical they were in this type of situation.

The store manager was very friendly and I think she really wanted to help. But she was also determined to adhere to the corporate repair policy.

Sticking to these policies cost Tumi a few things:

• Sally won’t buy a Tumi product again.
• I was in the market for a new suitcase but ruled out Tumi too.
• Negative word of mouth.

She eventually left the store without getting her bag fixed. The broken zipper pull was an annoying reminder of Tumi’s poor service every time she traveled.

Sally took her bag to Index Urban in San Diego last Saturday to get repaired. She knew she’d have to pay for the service, but it was worth it to get her bag back in just a couple of days.  I went with her because I still needed a new suitcase.

John, the owner, greeted us when we came in. He wrote up a repair bill for Sally’s bag and then helped me pick out a new suitcase. I went with a Briggs & Riley. They’re expensive like Tumi’s, but unlike Tumi they come with a real lifetime guarantee. And, I know I can take it back to Index Urban if anything does happen because they do repairs onsite.

We were happy customers at this point, but John sweetened the deal by throwing in monogrammed luggage tags for both of us.

The repair technician was off until Monday and John promised to give Sally a call once the technician had a chance to look at the bag. He surprised her with a call early Monday afternoon letting her know the bag had already been repaired. Even better was John waived the repair fee because he felt bad about our experience with Tumi!

Unlike the Tumi store manager, John wasn’t constrained by inflexible corporate policies because he was also the owner. Here’s how that paid off:

• I bought a suitcase.
• All of our future luggage purchases will come from Index Urban.
• Positive word of mouth.

We can’t all be the owner, but I wonder how much better service would be if more employees were empowered to act like John? I do know that Tumi would still have two customers.