Negotiate Anything!
Secrets to make businesses treat you fairly and for businesses ...
how to pull ahead of the competition through excellent customer service
by
Tom and Lynn Wilson
Smashwords Edition
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Published by:
Saxony Coburn on Smashwords
333 North Commercial Street
Suite 350
Neenah, WI 54956
1-800-985-1353
www.caregiverpartnership.com/negotiate-anything.aspx
lynnw@caregiverpartnership.com
Negotiate Anything!
Copyright © 2004 & 2010 by Tom and Lynn Wilson
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
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This book is dedicated to every consumer who puts his trust in an organization — profit, nonprofit or medical — by laying down his hard-earned money with the expectation of good service, honesty and getting that money’s worth.
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We would like to thank Jennifer Knaack for her excellent copy editing skills, attention to detail and thoughts on many of the creative aspects of this book.
We would also like to thank Shiloh Schoon for his imaginative and creative illustrations, which helped bring the examples to life while providing a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor that most of us can relate to.
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Table of Contents
Why a Primer on Customer Service?
Customer Service is Always in Style
The Customer Service Gold Standard
Loss of a 25-Year Loyal Customer
Dropped by the Wireless Companies
Just Plain Dumb Business Practices
Vacations: Condo and Hotel Rentals
Now, Go Get Your Money’s Worth
Praise for “Negotiate Anything!”
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THERE are thousands of books about customer service on Amazon.com, so when I was asked to write the foreword for “Negotiate Anything!” I was curious why the world needed yet another. But after reading just the first two chapters, I realized that “Negotiate Anything!” takes a very different approach in that it is two books in one — one for consumers and one for business leaders.
I have had over 20 years of experience leading a consumer services team for Kimberly-Clark Corporation. For many of those years, I worked with Tom Wilson while he was president of two of its global business sectors. As changes in modes of communication and product lines changed, our team included over 70 people at times. We handled 400,000 to 600,000 consumer contacts each year on brands including Kleenex, Huggies, Kotex, Depend and Poise products. I also met with Lynn and Tom shortly after they formed The CareGiver Partnership and was impressed with the type of service they were offering their customers — from answering all calls by the third ring, to using the customer’s name and responding quickly to requests. Providing superior customer service is critical to the success of any organization.
“Negotiate Anything!” provides consumers with a simple process to get what they deserve when something goes wrong with a company, product or service. It also provides pragmatic steps that businesses of any size can implement to significantly enhance their customer service and use it as a sustainable competitive advantage. The authors point out the causes of deteriorating customer service and what consumers and business leaders can do to improve it.
By following the process presented in “Negotiate Anything!” consumers can see immediate benefits. The authors show how they, as consumers, have saved more than $30,000 using their simple process. The authors are so confident the process will work for anyone, they offer a money-back guarantee.
Many quantitative studies have proven that organizations with the best customer service have better business results — in gaining new customers via word of mouth, better retention, and higher sales growth rates and profit margins. The authors present a pragmatic process for continually enhancing customer service throughout the entire organization and using it as a differentiating competitive advantage.
“Negotiate Anything!” really nails what it takes to get a company to respond in a timely and appropriate fashion. In my role as director of consumer services at Kimberly-Clark, we appreciated it when a dissatisfied customer provided us with clear, well-articulated information about an issue she had with one of our products. At times, we responded to over 50,000 contacts in one month alone, so it is absolutely essential for consumer service team members to have accurate and complete information to provide a speedy response. While companies may have guidelines for compensating consumers for issues with their product or service, it can be helpful for consumers to be specific about what they expect as compensation. If a consumer is vague about his experience and what he wants, a company has to use its best judgment to provide compensation that may or may not meet a customer’s expectations.
“Negotiate Anything!” points out how technology and cost-savings measures — such as the Internet, complicated phone systems, ticket kiosks and outsourcing — when misused actually deteriorate the delivery of customer service. Technology should enhance, not replace, the human factor, in many cases. Unfortunately, some organizations view customer service as an expense rather than a profit center. Therefore, anything that can be done to reduce expense is considered. Lower-cost service may include automated phone systems, expecting consumers to use FAQs to answer their own questions, making it difficult to locate a phone number to call the company, extending hold times and more.
For business leaders and owners, the authors present 12 success criteria that will make customer service a business driver rather than a cost center. The investment in customer service is no different than an investment in marketing, except it will likely have a greater and more sustainable result. A dollar invested toward a marketing tactic, such as a short-term price discount, can be easily and quickly copied by competitors, but the investment in an effective customer service approach may not be as easily replicated. The success criteria presented in this book include establishing customer service as a core business driver, ensuring that senior management leads and supports it, results are measured and reported, and employees are recognized when appropriate.
“Negotiate Anything!” is unique because of its duality of benefits to both consumers and business leaders. It will provide immediate financial benefits to consumers, which the authors guarantee in writing. Businesses, small and large, will realize sustainable volume and profit growth by implementing the 12 success criteria.
Cindy Van Grinsven
Former Director of Consumer Services
Kimberly-Clark Corporation
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“A complaint is a gift.”
Preface
WE have been asked many times, “Why did you write this book?” It was simple. In our personal lives, we’ve noticed a sharp deterioration of customer service. In the book, we explain why this has occurred. Tom is also a partner in one of the recognized best marketing consultancies: CenterBrain Partners, Inc., a 20-year-old practice that focuses on working with companies to help them position their products or services in the marketplace. CenterBrain has interviewed tens of thousands of consumers in markets across the United States over this period, in one-on-one discussions and quantitative surveys. It has clearly seen how frustrated consumers have become because of poor customer service. From the 1976 movie “Network,” consumers are “mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore.”
It would have been logical for a book about customer service to reflect a negative tone. We wanted the opposite — a positive message. A message that focuses on the solution, not the problem.
This book has two audiences. The first is for people like you and like us, everyday consumers who buy products and services as a matter of course in our daily lives and whose expectations are simply to receive what we were led to believe we should expect. We will share with you how to make your money work a lot harder by following simple steps to ensure that companies you do business with give you what they say they will.
This isn’t a book about developing negotiating skills, although you will learn some tips. It isn’t about becoming someone who rants, yells and complains — someone nobody wants to do business with. It’s about getting what you are promised, in an unemotional, process-oriented, fact-based manner.
You will learn the process, strategies, and steps we have developed and refined over the past 30 years. Throughout the book, we’ve included a number of actual examples we’ve had with all types of businesses. We’ve included some of the correspondence, such as letters and e-mails we’ve written, as well as some of the responses we’ve received. We did this because it is important to see firsthand the amount of follow-up and obsessive brute persistence that is required to Get Your Money’s Worth. Our correspondence provides a template for the type of information and the tone and manner in which you need to communicate in order to balance future outcomes in your favor.
The other audience for this book is business owners — from small shop owners to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and their deputies. This book will provide you with an idea of what your organization may be putting us consumers though. For you, we’ve developed a simple process that, if implemented, will give you an important and differential advantage vs. your competition. For some reason, organizations turn over every stone looking for a competitive edge, but most don’t consider, really consider, customer service as an option. Service is how IBM originally became successful.
In 2004, we identified a need to help caregivers and their loved ones provide home care. There was a large unmet need for access to resources, experts, and a place to find answers to caregiver questions relating to products and supplies used in a home care setting. We spent two years talking with caregivers throughout the United States about how we could best meet their needs, then formed The CareGiver Partnership, a national direct-to-consumer retailer of a broad range of products, services and resources.
We built The CareGiver Partnership with a singular focus on providing a whole new level of service to caregivers and their loved ones — what we coined as Personalized AttentionSM service — 1950s style. Research we conducted with caregivers (consumers) in cities across the United States clearly showed the majority were women, and they were upset about customer service calls being outsourced to countries where they couldn’t understand the person on the other end of the phone, then talking to someone who wasn’t knowledgeable. It annoyed them to push buttons, make choices, then wait on hold, listening to prerecorded messages about how important they are to a company. Caregivers are frustrated, frantic and frazzled.
With these insights in mind, we designed our service to make their lives a bit easier. We hired only women who had been, or were currently, caregivers to a family member or loved one. These are our Product Specialists, who work in our Wisconsin-based in-house call center. Our customers appreciate that our specialists speak clearly and slowly for those hard of hearing. Imagine an 80-year-old who is hard of hearing talking to someone in a foreign country who speaks in a low tone with a thick accent.
Most importantly, our caregivers want to speak to someone who is knowledgeable. That’s why each of our Product Specialists receives ongoing training on every product we offer. Training occurs via in-services from manufacturers’ reps who visit our training center, online and printed training aids, and teleconferences with manufacturers. Our team is given samples of many of the products so, when talking with a customer, they can speak from experience rather than relying on scripts, of which we have none.
We made a strategic decision to dismantle all the fancy features of our state-of-the-art phone system and simply answer all calls by the third ring — but usually the first or second. While making a presentation to an executive MBA class, a student said he ran a phone center for his company and that our operation could be more efficient if we forced people to wait on hold while our Product Specialists were busy with other customers. Our response was that our service is a key differentiator, and we are willing to invest in having sufficient staff available to answer customers’ calls right away.
We also use a returning customer’s first name in many cases when they call us. While on the phone with a customer, we write all orders on paper, rather typing them into the computer. This allows our Product Specialists to have a personalized and interactive discussion, and avoids the distracting background noise of a keyboard clicking and clacking. Our Product Specialists also sit in high-profile work spaces that are about three to four times larger than most call-center stations, to eliminate most distracting background noise, such as other conversations and ringing phones.
This book is not about The CareGiver Partnership, but you will learn how we have incorporated much of the learning from our personal customer service experience into crafting the company. We like to think that we at The CareGiver Partnership are so passionate about customer service, we literally wrote the book on it. With this in mind ...
Most consumers’ expectations are simple. For example, when a service organization says the repairperson will be at your home “in the morning,” to the average person this means before noon. How many times have you been frustrated that they can’t be more precise, such as say between 10 and 11 a.m.? This holds true for medical professionals as well.
Have you then waited around until 1 p.m. or so, then finally called, only to have a rude person tell you they must be running behind and should be there shortly? You wonder, with the number of cell phones in the United States today, doesn’t this repairperson have one? Or why doesn’t someone at the office call? Why? Because you are not that important to them.
The title of one of Bill O’Reilly’s books, “Who’s Looking Out For You?” is a good question to ask. It has to be you, because they aren’t. There was an example in the fall of 2007 where a woman could not get the “fantastic” service promised by her high-speed Internet and phone provider. When she went to the provider’s office to discuss, she was told to sit and wait for a manger to meet with her. A while later she was told he’d gone home. She came back the next day with a hammer. Needless to say, this isn’t a strategy we recommend, but it does illustrate how awful service has become and its effect on customers.
This book was a passion of ours, not intended to be a moneymaker. No one in their right minds would want to spend 30 years gathering information, not to mention the time spent organizing and writing the book. Especially when there are thousands of books for sale on Amazon.com with the phrase “customer service” in the title. Here is a list of some of the biggest sellers and why this book is unique:
“Customer Experience Management: A Revolutionary Approach to Connecting With Your Customers”
“Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless: How to Make Customers Love You, Keep Them Coming Back and Tell Everyone They Know”
“Call Center Success: Essential Skills for CSRs”
“The Big Book of Customer Service Training Games: Quick, Fun Activities for Training Customer Service Reps, Salespeople, and Anyone Else Who Deals With Customers”
As you can see from the titles above, most books about customer service are written as a how-to guide for businesses. What sets “Negotiate Anything!” apart is that it is that it is written for two audiences: consumers and business leaders. It is written to these two audiences in the hopes of improving the customer service process from end to end — from the interaction between the consumer and the company, during the shopping and purchase process, then between the company and consumer if an issue arises. Consumers will be delighted, and businesses that begin to leverage customer service as a differentiator will thrive. Business leaders need to know what’s wrong and how to fix it. On the other hand, consumers need to apply pressure to help provide the incentive for businesses to improve their service. Otherwise it’s business as usual. You need to expect and demand more.
For consumers, we’ve provided time-tested strategies on how to interact with companies to significantly improve getting your money’s worth in the process.
For business leaders, we explain why customer service has seriously eroded and its causes. Then we present strategies to significantly improve sustainable business growth by transforming organizations toward becoming the best in the world at providing customer service within their industries.
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No, that’s not right … you’re supposed to put tab A into slot D …
I think, but I don’t see a slot D. How in the heck are our customers
supposed to put this thing together?”
Chapter 1
Why a Primer on Customer Service?
WE didn’t wake up one day and decide to write this book. The genesis occurred in 1978, while Tom was working in marketing for Colgate-Palmolive and was privy to consumer complaints and insights about such brands as Dynamo detergent, Colgate toothpaste and Palmolive dishwashing liquid. Lynn had worked in customer service in the banking industry. While at Colgate, Tom was fortunate to be able to go to shopping malls in the New York City area every few months and spend a day with consumers, talking about the brand he was working on at the time, during which he would get an earful. Consumers tell it like it is, and those who use a particular brand frequently know more about it than many of the people who work at the company.
That’s when it dawned on us: The person responsible for all aspects of a brand, the product manager, needed to be intimately familiar with all aspects of it. This included using it frequently, buying it, reading the packaging for clarity, opening the packaging to see how it functions and discarding it. In other words, they need to “be one” with the brand. This same concept applies to any business, whether manufacturing, service or intangibles like insurance and banking products. A company and its employees should be intimate with all aspects of their brand. And those of its competitors.
Eventually Tom took a job at Kimberly-Clark Corporation and was responsible for several big brands, including Huggies diapers and baby wipes, Kotex feminine care, and Depend and Poise incontinence products. Lynn worked on the front lines at Dayton’s, Marshall Field & Co., and Macy’s for 11 years. Some of the most passionate consumers of Kimberly-Clark brands were the ones who wrote about their experiences with the Depend and Poise brands. Tom enjoyed taking the time to write and phone them to learn what issues they had with the products and marketing policies. While he was at Kimberly-Clark, the company would receive between 40,000 and 60,000 consumer contacts each month, all answered by friendly “Cheeseheads” in Neenah, Wisconsin.
Tom made it a practice to meet with those who were on the front line, talking with consumers every day. He made it a point to regularly listen to consumer calls, gaining keen insights into the company’s brands and what needed to be changed with the product design, description, packaging and marketing. As an officer of Kimberly-Clark, he felt this was one of his most important accountabilities. He was disappointed that many of those in management didn’t take the time to listen to consumers or find it all that important.
During the very early days of the Internet, Tom led the team that built Kimberly-Clark’s first corporate Web site. He insisted from day one that Kimberly-Clark provide consumers with an opportunity to contact the company online with complaints and product suggestions. This doesn’t seem remarkable today, but was novel at the time. He also insisted the company provide an immediate confirmatory response, with the final resolution occurring within 24 hours.
Tom and the team who responded to consumers were all surprised how quickly the Internet contact grew. The director of consumer services asked Tom to forecast the number of Internet contacts her team should expect on a monthly basis. He had benchmarked numbers from another consumer products company and told her to plan on 100. It quickly exceeded 1,000. Why did this happen? It was simply a more convenient way for consumers to communicate with the company. Kimberly-Clark still provided toll-free access and, of course, snail mail.
Unfortunately, some companies don’t set high standards for customer service. In early 2004, we wrote to a major airline based in the United States, one of the world’s largest airlines in fact, about a travel issue. The company promptly sent a letter confirming they had received ours. Good start, but regrettably, it didn’t follow up with a final response until 63 days after our initial contact — clearly not placing a great deal of emphasis on customer service.
Back to how we got started with this, the late 1970s. We started paying close attention to how companies and their employees delivered against customer service. Experiences ranged from downright deceit to mostly poor execution, driven by insufficient numbers of customer service employees that were poorly trained and not empowered to make decisions. They also were provided with an incomplete tool set and ineffective operational systems to assist them.
At some point along the way, we thought someday we would write a book about this. We began by maintaining a file of correspondence and keeping detailed notes about customer service issues we encountered, finally making time to assemble this early in the morning and during any free time we could find.
Because we’ve been collecting examples of good and bad customer service for 30 years, they span all types of businesses and service organizations, both for-profit and nonprofit. Our observation is that customer service, as an organizational process isn’t getting better; it’s getting worse. And technology has eroded, not enhanced, it.
The common denominator required to deliver outstanding customer service is having a sufficient number of intelligent, highly trained and empowered employees at the front end. Organizations are moving in the opposite direction. The Internet age, which stormed in during the 1990s, changed the way many companies do business. The buzzwords today are standardize, simplify, streamline. Others include outsource, cost-manage, efficiency, automate, downsize and right size. You don’t hear a great deal about being the best at providing customer service. A U.S. airline announced in June 2004 that it was replacing 200 gate agents with machines. Nice efficiency, we’re sure. Goodbye, customer service. God forbid you need to ask someone a question. We can hear them pleading, “But we need to cut costs to stay in business.” Keep cutting costs and you may be out of business.
Midwest Express was a premier airline in the United States for years, consistently rated No. 1 by fliers. It also ranked No. 2 or 3 in the world. Its unique selling proposition, and advertising tag line, was “Best Care in the Air.” During the 2008 recession, its CEO began changing aspects of the service that were the airline’s differentiator, making the seats narrower and reducing leg room and cutting out meals, free newspapers, and complimentary wine and champagne. Over a five-year period, Midwest Express became “Parity Care in the Air,” trying to compete on price, which they couldn’t. In April 2010, owner Republic Airways discontinued the brand and grounded the Midwest fleet due to inefficiencies. Midwest management had made the same mistake Kmart did when it tried to compete against Wal-Mart on price — it couldn’t. Meanwhile, retailers such as Target continued to focus on differentiation and customer service, and built strong brand equity.
Today, you are forced to pass through a gauntlet of online and telephone options before you can actually speak with a person. Companies expect you to review their Web sites’ frequently asked questions, or call an automated phone system with level upon level of numbers to key in to locate the right person or department.
Once we called an information technology corporation and the recording told us it was experiencing unusually high call volume and our wait would be at least five minutes. That’s kind of like hearing a partial score for a football game. Green Bay, 14 ... doesn’t tell you very much. We’d prefer knowing how long a wait will be. For example, “Your hold time will be between five and eight minutes.” They’ve got plenty of statisticians who develop complex algorithms; we’re sure they can figure this one out. By the way, have you ever heard a recording say, “Good news! Our call volume is really low today and we’ll be right with you”? That’s why at The CareGiver Partnership we answer virtually all calls by the third ring.
The reason you’re forced to wait on hold is due to poor planning and the fact that they’ve determined, based on quantitative market research studies, that you’ll wait a certain number of minutes before hanging up. To maximize efficiencies, they plan their resources to manage to this level.
In this book, we use the word “governor” several times. We define it as a device that can be installed on vehicles to maintain the speed of an engine or to keep it from going above a specific level by controlling the fuel or steam supply. To govern is to control something by restraint. We use this term in this book to refer to the process that companies use to govern how they manage peaks and valleys of call demand. Rather than add more customer service representatives, many organizations govern the volume by increasing your hold time to specified targeted levels they feel you will put up with. Worse yet, some simply have recordings saying, “Our call volume is unusually high. Please call back later.” Click. Nice personalized touch. Occasionally, calls at The CareGiver Partnership go to recording, but we don’t keep people waiting on hold; we call them back, usually within 15 minutes.
Again, consumers become the governor for poor planning on the part of companies’ customer service functions. Rather than have customer service representatives idle from time to time, companies force us to become their governor and sit and idle.
The last thing many companies want you to do today is to actually talk to someone. As the saying goes, time is money. To add insult to injury, some organizations have people in other countries providing customer service. Remember what we said about being intimate with your brand and what it takes to successfully deliver excellent customer service: intelligent, highly trained and empowered employees.
Outsourcing customer service saves money; that has been proven. In the long run, however, a company may have fewer customers calling, as they quit purchasing the brand due to poor customer service. Once an organization lets the “bean counters” take control of the business, they’ll cost-save it to death. They get paid to reduce costs. Most bean counters couldn’t tell you what brand equity is or why it’s important. Because it is challenging to quantitatively measure, to them it isn’t important. They can easily measure how much a call costs to answer in Bangalore, India, vs. Neenah, Wisconsin, however. Believe it or not, Neenah (pronounced Nina) is one of the leading call-center areas in the United States.
An example that comes to mind came from a friend who is a member of the American Automobile Association. He had a flat tire and called AAA to have someone come fix it. When he called to explain his location, it was evident he was talking to someone in a foreign country who couldn’t find his location on a map. So much for the American Automobile Association. The least the organization could have done was provide proper training and require an adequate level of communication skills.
Through the CenterBrain Partners consulting practice, consumers of all types consistently tell us how much they dislike having their calls answered outside the United States. Outsourcing has its place and its limits.
Amazon.com is an example illustrating the lengths companies will go to in order to avoid having you actually talk with a person. We love Amazon and always have. We’ve purchased more merchandise than we planned on because they made it easy and fun. That was, until we needed to return something and went online to find out how. The options listed on its Web site didn’t pertain to our situation, so we looked for a number to call. That turned into a “Where’s Waldo?” situation. We searched all over the site and couldn’t come up with a number. We then searched the Internet and found the number from someone else, who, as frustrated as we were, dug and dug until he found it. As a bonus for buying this book, the number is 800-201-7575.
Contrast the number of transactions being conducted in person in the 1950s with today. The Internet age, with exponentially increasing levels of online shopping, has virtually eliminated human contact as part of the transaction process. The airlines certainly don’t want you to call; they have set the cost penalty so high that no one wants to purchase a ticket over the phone or at the counter. The little human contact that does occur is either via phone or online chat. As a result, there are fewer highly trained individuals who know how to provide excellent customer service. The art of personalized customer service has significantly declined since about 1990, especially in the digital age and after the birth of the Internet.
Think about times where you have been in a store and upon checking out you say thanks to the store associate. Frequently the only response you’ll hear is “yup” or “no problem,” or nothing at all. Do you ever ask yourself why you’re thanking them and not the other way around? This amazes us; you step up to the counter and they say nothing. Why is that? It’s simple: Companies don’t recruit and train the right people or set high standards.
After staying at a few of the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, we realized if we asked an associate for something, he would respond with, “Certainly, it would be my pleasure.” Wow. Six simple words that deliver so much. Sure beats “yup” or “no problem.”
At The CareGiver Partnership, our vision to provide the best customer service includes making a return or problem-solving process as simple as an initial purchase. There are a number of companies that do this well, including L.L.Bean and Lands’ End. We’re sure there are many others, and if you believe you are one of them, please let us know.
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Chapter 2
Help Me. Please!
“You can’t always get what you want, But if you try sometime, You just might find you get what you need.” — The Rolling Stones
WHEN you make a transaction, you have certain expectations. Most of the time these expectations are met. Unfortunately, many company policies are designed to work in favor of the company. While many companies talk about customer service — the customer is king, the customer is No. 1 — few have the policies, procedures, personnel, systems or tools in place to deliver against that promise. The only person looking out for your best interest is you. This book will help you resolve issues when they occur, and balance the outcome more in your favor than what you may be accustomed to. Accomplishing this requires time, patience and a process. Getting angry, causing a scene, name calling and talking in generalities are of little to no value to you.
If you follow the simple steps in this book, you will get more for your money in the long run. We guarantee it. You will also be part of a small army of consumers working to make companies more responsive and accountable to their shareholders, but also to their customers, who provide the healthy salaries, bonuses and stock options to the executives.
•
“A sale is not something you pursue. It’s something that happens to you while you’re immersed in serving your customer.”
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How to Get Your Money’s Worth When Things Go Wrong
• Keep receipts at least for the length of the product’s warranty.
• Keep original packaging, cartons and instruction manuals for a reasonable period of time, until you’re sure a product meets your needs. If you want to return it, you’ll need these items.
• Register products as soon after the purchase as possible.
• If an issue occurs and you need to contact the company, keep a record of the following:
* Date of contact
* Whom you talked to, including pertinent information such as employee name, identification number, and phone and extension number
* Details of what was discussed
* Details of the promised follow-up and timing
• Always communicate facts. Don’t call names, make threats or become overly emotional. It is, however, acceptable to be very assertive.
• If a serious problem occurs and you need to write to the company, provide fully detailed information in chronological sequence, including people’s names, titles, promised follow-up, account numbers, and your detailed contact information, including your address, phone, fax and e-mail. Don’t communicate in generalities.
Begin your letter with your purpose for writing: “The purpose of this letter is to ______.”
Immediately after stating the purpose of your letter, state specifically what you are looking for. Several examples:
* I am writing to seek a refund on our ________.
* I am writing to be reimbursed for ________.
* I would like our frequent flyer miles reinstated.
* I would like a day’s credit applied, since my cable was out on (date).
• Following this, create a subhead titled “Background” and explain in chronological sequence what had happened to date. Be as specific and unemotional as possible.
• Always write to the CEO. It may not help, but it won’t hurt either. As a former officer of a Fortune 150 company, whenever I received a consumer complaint that was directed to the CEO’s office and handed down to me, my objective was to make sure the only reason that consumer would write back to the CEO was to let him know how happy he was with my fast and complete response.
• If the company makes a settlement offer, be reasonable. Think through in advance what makes sense from its perspective and yours, and where you’re willing to compromise.
If you become involved in negotiation, reduce your requirements in baby steps, not major increments. For example, if you were looking for $100 in compensation and the company has offered $50, don’t come down to $60. It’s better to put forward a counteroffer of, say, $90 or $95 if the company will agree to settle your issue right away.
If you haven’t yet stated specifically what you are looking for the company to give you, and it asks what you want, let the company bid first. Follow this rule: Never bid against yourself. Ask, “What do you feel is reasonable?” The company might suggest more than you expected. If not, then you can begin your negotiation. For example, you ask, “What do you feel is reasonable?” It says $50, but you feel $80 is more appropriate. Clearly state you feel $100 is reasonable and bargain from there, in small steps.
Try to bargain with something that has value to you and isn’t as costly to the company. For example, airlines and hotels will give you miles or frequent-traveler credits faster than cash. It costs the company less, and your usage ensures it will get more business. Stores would prefer to give you an in-store credit.
• When contacting a company, give it at least 30 days to respond. We use a follow-up system to “tickle” the last letter 31 days in advance. If we haven’t heard anything, we send another letter, telling the company we’re following up. We frequently include the original letter, so it has all the background in case it has “misplaced” the original. Any company that doesn’t respond within a month is demonstrating poor customer service.
• If your situation is reasonably serious, copy appropriate regulatory groups, trade groups such as the Better Business Bureau, and governmental agencies, such as your state’s attorney general. Most organizational leaders want to avoid negative publicity.
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Employees can’t be expected to provide excellent customer service with broken tools and lack of training.
Chapter 3
Customer Service Is Always in Style
THIS chapter is directed at business leaders, from shop owners in Paducah, Kentucky, to business executives of major corporations on Park Avenue in New York. If you’re “just” a consumer, you’re going to enjoy reading this also!
First, Mr., Mrs. or Ms. Business Executive, let’s be honest. Especially you big-time corporate executives who get upset when the dinner selection your staff has provided on your G550 corporate jet wasn’t prepared properly. For consumers reading this chapter, a G550 is one of handful of decked-out, expensive business jets. G5 is short for Gulfstream 500; go to www.gulfstream.com/g550 to check it out. It has a range of 6,750 nautical miles, cruising at Mach .885 at 51,000 feet. There is now a G650. These “Greyhound buses” for corporate execs include on-board showers, staterooms, galleys with countertop cooking, exercise bikes, surround-sound entertainment systems, multiple flat-panel video monitors, satellite phones and DIRECTV. Tom flew all over the world on planes like this. Don’t feel too sorry for the business executives who have to travel a lot, especially when you are standing in a long queue at the airport waiting to get through security.
Now, be honest about the amount of time you, the business leader, seriously paid attention to customer service in the past 12 months. If you did focus on it, it was likely due to a crisis that needed your immediate attention. We’re not talking about the short-term, reactionary time you may have invested. We’re talking about customer service as a strategy to drive business results. We’re talking about a strategy that backs up platitudes such as “our customers come first” or “our customers are our most important asset” or “we’re not satisfied until our customers are.” This would include all the large banking, cable and cell phone companies — a lot of “happy talk” with poor customer service delivery.
Certainly, there are a number of organizations that have created outstanding customer service strategies and have backed them up with an appropriate level of resources. Some names that come to mind are Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Lands’ End, Sears, Victoria’s Secret, L.L.Bean, 1-800 CONTACTS and Chico’s clothing stores. We’re sure there are many others. Why do we like these?
Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts
In a following section, we discuss why we think Four Seasons is the best at customer service, so we won’t repeat ourselves. We feel it has the best, most consistent customer service.
Lands’ End
Lands’ End makes it easy to order and has a world-class Web site. It also has people readily available online to answer questions. We’ve enjoyed shopping with Lands’ End because we know if we have any issue at all, the company will gladly take back merchandise. It makes the return process as easy as the purchase process.
Sears
You may not expect Sears to be on our list of the best, but Sears was built on 100 percent customer satisfaction. As kids, we loved going to Sears. It was vibrant and alive, with lots of things to look at. We loved the dishwashers with the clear fronts, where we could watch the water jets. While it’s true Sears isn’t what it used to be, the Craftsman guarantee keeps us coming back. Why would we buy tools anywhere else? It has great tools, innovations, the Craftsman name and the Sears guarantee. It if breaks for any reason, it gets replaced, no questions asked. We tested the guarantee in the recent past, and it’s as good as it ever was.
L.L.Bean
L.L.Bean answers the phone right away. The company has enough people, and they know it’s you who’s calling and have account numbers on hand. L.L.Bean also embraces technology. When your order arrives, you are provided with two labels: One is postage paid and the company subtracts that from your account for convenience; the other label is preaddressed and you can pay the postage. They make it convenient and give you options.
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“Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game.”
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1-800 CONTACTS
This is an organization that markets, well, contacts. When you call, someone answers right away. It seems to have avoided the queuing nightmare that most companies put consumers through. Moreover, the employees speak clearly, enunciate and demonstrate proper phone etiquette. We’re all for cost savings, but if you hire people whom your customers can’t understand or who don’t have excellent phone etiquette, you may be doing yourself more harm than good.
For example, if you’re dealing with people who are hard of hearing, avoid hiring women with higher-pitched voices. The fact is the pitch of many women’s voices can be difficult to discern for those hard of hearing. Add to that someone who speaks rapidly and uses “like” and “so,” and it can be challenging and annoying to your customers. And let’s face it, baby boomers are getting older and hard of hearing (perhaps from too many rock concerts). By the way, don’t refer to boomers as “seniors”; they don’t appreciate it.
Back to 1-800 CONTACTS. During a phone conversation, its representatives frequently use your name and repeat back your request, to check for understanding. For example, a customer service representative might say, “OK, Mr. Wilson, to make sure I understand, you’d like to return your contacts for a full refund. Is that correct?” For a return, the company sends you a return label that includes postage, and that’s all there is to that.
Chico’s
Chico’s is a woman’s clothing store that obviously wants to keep its frequent shoppers coming back. Once a person spends $500, she becomes a Passport Club member. Members receive their catalogs and promotional information automatically by mail and are invited to parties and events. They even have special gifts for Passport Members throughout the year. Shipping is waived and members receive a 5 percent discount.
As mentioned, we’re sure there are countless other great examples, and we’d love to hear about them. We’re sure there are many individuals who strive to provide outstanding customer service. It’s challenging to work in an organization where the process, training and systems don’t allow employees to consistently deliver.
12 Success Criteria: Customer Service As a Business Driver
Following are the “12 Commandments” for driving business results by leveraging customer service. We will later discuss each one in detail.
1. Customer service must be established as a core business driver.
2. Senior management must lead and actively support it.
3. The strategy must be long-term in nature — be “inculturated.”
4. It must become an organizational expectation.
5. It must be a serious component of performance reviews.
6. Your customer service strategy should be differentiated.
7. You should quantify your position. And the competition’s.
8. Set short-, medium- and longer-term objectives.
9. Quantitatively measure results annually.
10. Report progress to employees frequently.
11. Invest in customer service, such as people, tools and systems.
12. Reward employees with recognition, rewards and promotions.
Let’s look at each of these in more detail.
Establish Customer Service as a Core Business Driver
All businesses seek to invest time and money in developing a sustainable advantage vs. their competition. Two obvious choices are in product innovation and price. Both require investment in different areas. We’d all love to have our products or services locked up with long-term patents. However, after 30 years of working in consumer products with two world-class companies, this is difficult to nearly impossible to accomplish. There are simply too many smart competitors that can figure out how to design around your intellectual property. Having said that, occasionally companies do develop strong protection.
Another competitive strategy is price. Wal-Mart was built on this foundation from day one. It kept its overhead lower than the competition’s and changed the world’s retail landscape. Unless you’ve built your organization from the ground up with a low-cost strategy, you’re not likely to become low cost anytime soon. We mentioned previous examples of companies that attempted to compete on price without a low-cost position and lost. Kmart almost went out of business, and Midwest ended up on the airline junk heap with Eastern, Pam Am, TWA and others.
Most executives, when seeking competitive advantage, don’t consider customer service. Maybe because it’s not glamorous (“Oh, we have to have that, but we try to keep costs down”). Maybe they don’t strongly consider it because they didn’t teach it in business school and Harvard Business Review doesn’t publish case studies on it. We feel customer service will become the next big “discovery” in driving successful, profitable growth. All the leading business school professors and Blue Chip Consultants will claim to have discovered the key to business growth. It will be the next big buzzword, like the overused “consumer insights.”
Business goes through phases, trends and fashion, just like clothing styles and music. For example, at one point it was fashionable to be vertically integrated. If you made cars, you owned ore mines. If you made paper, you owned forests. Today the opposite is true. Today’s fashion statement: If it isn’t a core competency, it’s outsourced. Remember the American Automobile Association example we mentioned? The pendulum will swing back, and organizations will discover customer service as a way to differentiate their brands.
The great thing about developing customer service as a differentiator is that it can’t be created overnight. You might ask why that is great. Because it’s somewhat of a subversive competitive weapon. For example, if you drop your price, your competition hears about it, usually from your customers, and they can follow you almost immediately. With customer service as a differentiator, by the time it begins having a noticeable impact on your business results, it would take your competitors years to catch up. As a strategy, it’s sustainable and ownable. It’s an equity builder. And it’s measurable, which we’ll discuss later.
What makes it great also makes it problematic. Today’s business executives seem to have Attention Deficit Disorder. This is brought on by the need to create instant results so they can demonstrate action at the next board meeting. That makes it challenging to “sell” a strategy that may need a couple of years to begin showing results. On the flip side, your competition would be faced with a similar uphill battle. If you capture the high ground before they do, it’s less likely they will want to simply copy you.
Senior Management Must Lead and Drive Customer Service
Customer service as a long-term strategy to drive results and differentiate the organization is not something that can be led from the bottom up. Lower- to middle-level management can recommend it, but like anything in an organization, to be successful it must have not only the support of senior management, but they must lead and drive it.
They must communicate the vision, why it’s important and how the organization will get there. It can’t be seen as another “one off” short-term program developed by management only to be replaced by another a year from now or next quarter.
The Strategy Must Be Long-Term in Nature
Driving business results through customer service is not a short-term program. It’s not the annual “drive for success” program. It is a strategy that is well thought out, designed to create a major and sustainable competitive advantage over time. It may take several years before you begin to see tangible results.
It doesn’t have to be a big-bang program. It can be implemented in phases to better manage cash flow, allowing you to learn as you go and make adjustments to fit your particular business or industry — big or small, in any industry.
It Must Become an Organizational Expectation
All employees must be aware that:
• The focus on customer service is a major organizational strategy. Ideally, they first hear about it from senior management.
• The company is investing in it, with people, training, processes and systems.
• Each employee will play a role and will know what his or hers is.
• Results will be measured and reported on a regular basis.
• Employee contribution to customer service will be evaluated annually as part of a performance review.
It Must Be a Serious Component of Performance Reviews
We included the word “serious” because so often companies include accountabilities in position descriptions without any teeth. For example, we’ve seen statements such as “support corporate diversity and inclusivity efforts.” That doesn’t say much, is open to interpretation, and typically in reviews may not be covered or is merely glossed over. Therefore, the word serious means there will be a serious discussion of an employee’s contribution, or lack thereof, to help reach specific customer service objectives.
Differentiate Your Customer Service Strategy
You need to understand what is important to your customers and design your customer service strategy to meet those needs better than anyone else. Just like companies strive to position their products and services to be unique and distinctive, you need to do the same with customer service. Remember the CenterBrain Three T’s we’re sharing below. As previously mentioned, The CareGiver Partnership positioned its business on providing Personalized AttentionSM service with specific elements of how our differentiated level of service is delivered.
Tangible Benefit
Your customer service selling proposition should quickly answer the consumer’s question of, “What’s in it for me?” In the case of Sears Craftsman tools, the benefit is value. I know if I buy a tool and anything goes wrong at any time for any reason, I get a new one with no questions asked.
Truth
Support for the selling proposition is grounded in logic. The guarantee on Sears Craftsman tools is backed — the company delivers on the claim. No ifs, ands or buts; no mouse type, legalese, exceptions or disclaimers.
That’s Me
A universal insight is acknowledged that lets the consumer or customer know your organization understands him better than any other. Sears knows its customers shop for value. A 100 percent lifetime guarantee spells value to the consumer.
Quantify Your Position, and the Competition’s
Develop a quantified baseline understanding of how your important customer groups rate doing business with you. Include the competition. Think through your questionnaire so it can be used long into the future and trends can be monitored. When you measure performance, use a quintile measurement of your customers so you get input from a cross section of your largest to your smallest customers.
Set Short-, Medium- and Longer-Term Objectives
Once you know what the baseline is, establish short-, medium- and long-term targets. Identify the strategy you will employ to achieve those objectives. Further break down key milestones and resources that will be required. This includes incremental head count, improved training, and systems and tools.
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“Choose to deliver amazing service to your customers. You’ll stand out because they don’t get it anywhere else.”
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Quantitatively Measure Results on an Ongoing Basis
Conduct a tracking study to measure progress on a regular basis. Include the competition. Without this tool, you will not know if you are making progress. You may develop some areas more quickly than others and decide to place more resources against objectives that are progressing more slowly that you’d like. A book on this that we embrace is titled “The Ultimate Question.” We recommend reading it and getting copies for those within your organization.
At The CareGiver Partnership, we continually track our Net Promoter Score, or NPS. A company’s NPS is a concept from the aforementioned “The Ultimate Question” by Fred Reichheld of Bain & Company. His premise is that companies that provide excellent service have higher margins, grow faster and make more money. To measure this, we employ an outside third-party market research organization that mails surveys to customers who have purchased from us at least two times. One of the questions asked is, “Based on your personal experience with The CareGiver Partnership, how likely would you be to recommend us to a family member or friend?” We use a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being “highly likely.” Consumers who rate us a 1 through 6 (detractors) are subtracted from those rating us a 9 or 10 (promoters); the net result is our NPS, which ranges from 85 to 90+ percent. Financial institutions we’ve consulted for often have a negative NPS; they have lots of customers that really, really dislike them. Our guess is that most banks, credit card brands, cable companies and cell phone providers would have a negative NPS.
Report Progress to Employees Frequently
Include updates of customer service in all key meeting and communication vehicles throughout your organization. Don’t give a presentation without discussing progress on customer service, what areas need improvement and what future investments are planned.
At The CareGiver Partnership, customer input from our tracking study is entered weekly into an online database. Results are available online for all at The CareGiver Partnership to read. In this manner, it isn’t “management” telling the team what needs to be enhanced, because the team can see what consumers are saying each week and make adjustments.
Invest in Customer Service
All the greatest strategies, consultants’ recommendations and quantified studies are worthless without an investment in customer service. The key investments are people, tools and systems. Let’s review each.
People
People are at the heart of driving your customer service results. There are four people components:
• Sufficient quantity
• High quality, intelligent and motivated
• In-depth and ongoing training
• Empowered
Sufficient Quantity
The most highly trained people supported with the best systems can’t get the job done if there aren’t sufficient numbers. For example, in a call center on Monday morning, if you need 12 people on the phones to cover the weekend buildup and you only have eight, you’re going to have poor results. This happens frequently. Companies know Monday’s call volume is the highest of any day in the week, yet they allow consumers to act as the “governor,” a term we previously defined in the context of customer service. Rather than having enough people to take your call, you hear, “Due to a higher than normal call volume, your wait will be at least XX minutes.” Worse yet is, “Due to higher than normal call volume, you should call back later.” Click.
At The CareGiver Partnership, we have more people on the phones on Mondays so we can answer all calls by the third ring. The other peak period is between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., while people are on lunch breaks from the East Coast to the West Coast.
The bottom line is, you need people in sufficient numbers. If there is downtime, employees can conduct training or learn about new or improved products, features or problem areas. Don’t make your customers queue up and listen to annoying recorded music. Even worse for a customer is being placed on hold and being forced to listen to someone who sounds like he is on amphetamines telling you how important customer service is to the company, or that the company won the J.D. Power award last year for great service. We swear executives don’t call their own customer service areas. If they did, many would be incensed and make immediate changes.
Following is an example of listening to and responding to consumers’ service needs. At CenterBrain Partners, we consulted with a leading manufacturer of playground equipment. The particular product was sold at stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s. Through our research, which included listening to consumers, we learned that for most men (and yes, it’s the men who typically construct these), building a play set is not easy. We also learned the company had a customer service hot line to provide help Mondays through Fridays. The problem was that most men construct play sets on weekends. The company completely redesigned the build system, eliminating more than half the parts and steps. It also had its customer service team available on weekends during the spring and summer, with product engineers on call for the really tough questions.
Quality
The second people component is quality. You have to hire good people with valuable backgrounds, who are intelligent, articulate and can speak English, or the language you communicate in. If your customer service people can’t be understood by your customers, you might be doing more harm than good. There is a saying Tom heard in a presentation from the CEO of Wal-Mart: “You can train skills, but you can’t train attitude. Hire people with good attitudes.” We agree completely.
Training
The third people aspect is training, to which there are two parts. The first includes in-depth training in your products or services. So often we’re confronted with customer service people who obviously don’t know the product line. Worse are companies that outsource customer service. The people who represent them may not know much about the company itself, let alone the particulars of the product or service. We have a real problem with outsourcing customer service; if you are serious about customer service, you simply wouldn’t do this. We believe your customer service people should be more knowledgeable about your product or service than your customers. This just makes sense. You must give your customer service people sample products to take home, and use if practical. You should also include your competitors’ products.
The second part of training is to enhance certain skill sets. The three most important skills are communications, negotiations and conflict resolution. There are many good sources for each of these. For example, in the area of negotiating, there is an audio CD set we think is particularly good; its title is “The Power of Nice.”
Earlier we mentioned customer service organizations must be properly staffed, and that downtime can be used for training and other tasks. In this case, during a slower period, an employee could put on headphones and listen to a training CD. The benefits are zero wasted time, enhanced skill sets, improved customer service and reduced boredom.