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posts relating to customer focus, customer service...
Recommended posts: Companies in Need of Customer Focus - Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus - No Customer Focus - Usability Failures
Related: Voice of the Customer - Kano Model of customer satisfaction
Companies seem to think technology is an excuse to provide bad service. Or maybe they don’t need any excuse at all to do so, based on how often they provide bad service. My latest experience with lame pointy haired boss technology came while looking to watch a football game online. Years ago you could listen to any Wisconsin Badger game over the internet - very simple, no special software (just the simple free Real Audio plugin). In subsequent years (just to play a simple audio stream that had worked in previous years they kept requiring upgrades and their ever more complex required software would fail very often). Then the option of listen to online radio broadcasts disappeared altogether (for schools that chose to prevent this anyway).
Now sites that provide video seem incapable of making it a simple process. They chose not to use standard open software solutions. Instead they require you follow their desires to use this or that and then the whole operation fails quite often. Google, no surprise, is an exception (yes it worked prior to Google, they were just smart enough to buy it and not break it). YouTube just works. Can others copy this, idea? Some can, but many phbs decide that really everyone that uses their web sites should be happy to try and download special software and make configuration changes… to get their site working on their personal computers.
The idea that playing video online is solved problem and just making it more and more complex is not a good idea for users no matter if they want to add some bullet points to their boss on why they should get a larger raise this year because they got the engineers to add on some additional new feature that no-one actually wants. Granted This solved problem is a bit lame now, so I am all for improving it. But this should be a process that goes for simpler solutions, not more complex ones. And certainly any timed to the operating system of the end user is too idiotic to consider.
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Agile management (agile software development specifically) is something that makes a big difference in my work life. David Anderson consistently provides great ideas on agile management and he does so again in this 90 minute presentation on the future directions for agile. As I learned about agile software development, what I saw was a great implementation of management improvement practices focused on software development that was very compatible with Deming’s management philosophy and lean thinking practices. The Agile manifesto:
The first line can seem to be at odds, but I think in practice it is not - though I admit it may seem that way based on the importance placed on process by Deming (I think you have to read on agile to understand why this is the case). For my use of agile software develop, a highlight of the most important ideas is:
Important concepts addressed by agile management: highly collaborative, risk tolerance, systems thinking, customer interaction, craftsmanship ethic [joy in work], eliminate waste. Great quote from the webcast:
Related: Kanban In Software Engineering - Management Science for Software Engineering - Improving Communication - webcast of David Anderson talking about applying Agile and Deming’s ideas at Microsoft - What is Agile Software Development?
How is this for Gobbledygook? Your home banking access code is expired! You must change your access code at this time. Your access code:
* may be between 4 and 20 characters in length
* must not have been changed within the last 0 days
* may not be one of 3 previously used access codes
* must not repeat the same character more than 0 times
* must not contain 0 characters from previous access code
* must contain at least 0 non-alphabetic character(s)
* may contain the following special characters: !”#$%&()+,-/;<=>?[\]^_`{|}*’
* must contain at least 0 alphabetic character(s)
1) What does “must not have been changed within the last 0 days” mean?
2) How about “must not repeat the same character more than 0 times” ?
3) Or “must not contain 0 characters from previous access code” ?
This kind of stuff is what makes people think computer programmers are crazy. I am sure the software allows users to set criteria. Then this screen is suppose to explain the criteria to users. It seems to me, if the selection is 0, then the correct procedure is to not display anything about it to the user.
Really I am not sure how “must not contain 0 characters from previous access code” is even to be applied if an positive integer were used. I guess you could not allow using any characters from the last access code, which seems crazy to me to begin with, but setting a number seems totally bizarre. I could see setting a requirement that says no repeat of the same sequence of x characters. I think that would probably not work well, but at least I understand what it would mean.
Related: Change Your Name - Bad Software Visual Controls - Complicating Simplicity - web usability resources - Schneier on Security
In, Don’t do what your users say, Hanford Lemoore, provides a nice illustration of why customer focus is important but must be done with care.
This is a great example of looking for the root cause and going to the gemba. You must focus on customers but you must bring thought into how you react. Just doing what they say is likely a bad idea. Ignoring them is also bad. But listening and learning and then adjusting is good.
Related: Pleasing Customers - Confusing Customer Focus - What Could we do Better? - Good Customer Service Example - Find the Root Cause
HP shatters excessive packaging world record
Sadly not. What the überbox did contain was 16 smaller boxes “which in turn [each] contained (wrapped in foam so they wouldn’t get broken) exactly two sheets of A4 paper”
It is hard to imagine what management system creates such solutions. But it is not hard to image Dilbert’s pointy haired boss fitting right in there.
Related: Is Poor Service the Industry Standard (HP)? - Muda/waste - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Companies in Need of Customer Focus
It is obvious a few companies don’t have any ability to, provide even just reasonably bad service (for them the goal of decent service is so far away as to not be reasonable). How often do Verizon (based on their lousy track record I won’t get FIOS), Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, United… get blasted for horrible custom service? So often it is not news. Still, the stories of their failures are written about over and over as they make so many people so mad some can’t help posting yet another story about the failures to value customers. Seth Godin is one recent example - Learning from frustration:
Related: Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus - More Bad Customer Service Examples 
- Customer Hostility from Discover Card - Is Bad Service the Industry Standard? - Ritz Carlton and Home Depot - Better and Different
Zipcar is an intriguing idea where you rent cars by the hour. The whole process is a significant change from the previous rental model (gas, parking and insurance included). Zipcar makes deals with local governments to secure zipcar parking near public transportation. They also have deals with universities, apartment buildings and businesses all of which provides a new level of easy customer access with cars available in many locations. The internet is used to schedule and provide up to date information. It is a great idea for those in cities where you can design your life so a car is rarely needed. But having access to a car in those times can be very convenient.
The images show zipcars available near the White House in Washington DC. The White House is in the middle of the bottom of the image (Lafayette Square is immediately north of the White House).
The rates are not cheap when you look at per hour costs. But when you look at replacing the need for a car the savings can be large (if you do not drive too much). And for those that doing without a car is not realistic zipcar can be used for any needs for a second car. It is still a pretty large change in mindset. To try and help people give the idea a try Zipcar is trying the Zipcar Low-Car Diet challenge.
During the month, we’ll ask that you check in and let us know how your diet’s going. You can send us emails, even video clips, to share your thoughts and stories. We’ll post excerpts on our website to help keep everyone motivated!
Related: Traffic Congestion Non-Solution - Airfare Innovation Example - Urban Planning - Deming on Innovation (more…)
“You have to treat your employees like customers”
“There isn’t any customer satisfaction without employee satisfaction,” said Gordon Bethune, the former chief executive of Continental Airlines, and an old friend of Mr. Kelleher’s. “He recognized that good employee relations would affect the bottom line. He knew that having employees who wanted to do a good job would drive revenue and lower costs.
Well said. Related: Focus on Customers and Employees - Airline Quality - Respect for People - Curious Cat Management Improvement Dictionary
| Training new employees and then paying them to quit, sounds pretty bizarre; Zappos is not afraid of doing things differently. Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit - And You Should Too:
Zappos sells shoes—lots of them—over the Internet. The company expects to generate sales of more than $1 billion this year, up from just $70 million five years ago…
Zappos has also mastered the art of telephone service - a black hole for most Internet retailers. Zappos publishes its 1-800 number on every single page of the site - and its smart and entertaining call-center employees are free to do whatever it takes to make you happy. There are no scripts, no time limits on calls, no robotic behavior, and plenty of legendary stories about Zappos and its customers. This is a company that’s bursting with personality, to the point where a huge number of its 1,600 employees are power users of Twitter so that their friends, colleagues, and customers know what they’re up to at any moment in time. But here’s what’s really interesting. It’s a hard job, answering phones and talking to customers for hours at a time. So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period. |
About 10% of employees take them up on the offer.
Do any of you readers want to convince Zappo’s to buy a couple airlines (Jet Blue and Southwest don’t seem to go where I need to go, too often) a cell phone company, an internet service provider and a credit card company? I could appreciate the good service in those areas 
If I were them I would start with the credit card company - I really don’t understand why someone doesn’t provide good service in that area - with the huge profits it provides and competitors that treat customers like rubes to be fleeced. Airlines you have to be crazy to buy (so don’t try to convince them of that one first).
My friend, Sean Stickle, went to work for custom ink a few months ago. I don’t think they offer to pay new employees to leave but they are devoted to customer service and to not just saying customer service is important but focusing attention on delivering it. They publish “Uncensored Customer Reviews” on their home page. There are some companies that really do value customer service even while most companies do everything they can to provide horrible service.
Related: Respect for People - Understanding Psychology - Starbucks: Respect for Workers and Health Care - Company Culture - Enhancing Passion in Employees - Respect for Workers - Mistreated Customers Let the World Wide Web Know
Why is it? I really don’t know. It drives me crazy though - having to put up with horrible service again and again. Is it possible that only a few people actually care about service? I know I care about it, but given the preference of business to continually provide horrible service it should be that you can just provide plan mediocre service and take their business. Yet these companies providing what seems likes worse and worse service somehow stay in business.
Related: Is Bad Service the Industry Standard? - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Poor Customer Service from Discover Card
David Heinemeier Hansson Talk at Startup School 2008 (Paul Graham’s Y-combinator school). It is helpful to appreciate the importance of some simple ideas. Working on web focused businesses people often get carried away with the huge potential and sometimes lose touch with reality. While the ideas are more obvious when looking at web related business their is plenty here for many companies (the second half might be more helpful for many).
In this talk David does a great job of explaining how 37 signals has chosen to work. They are not concerned with becoming large. They focus on doing what they want to do - creating great software solutions (see: Systemic Workplace Experiments). And on making money to allow them to stay in business.
Some tidbits of advice: create great applications, charge people money, make a profit. Yes to those outside the web world this might seem obvious… He discusses a very similar idea to the idea of 1,000 true fans. He mentions to bring in a $1 million, all you need is 2,000 customers paying $40/month. 37 Signals has done well focusing on small business. Don’t be in such a hurry.
Related: Why is 37signals so arrogant? - Complicating Simplicity - Joy in Software Development - Great Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation
Misuse of the “Customer” Concept
“We are told that the airlines are our customers,” FAA inspector Charlambe “Bobby” Boutris said. “But we have a more important customer, the taxpayers” who want government to ensure a safe aviation system.
That’s crazy. The FAA is supposed to be serving and protecting the passengers, not the airlines. This is like a supervisor in a workplace treating their employee as a customer… even in a “servant leadership” environment, that’s not right.
“Customer focus” is good, but only if you properly define customer relationships. I’d prefer the FAA think of me and my fellow travelers as the “customer,” not the airlines.
I agree there are several different customers. This is actually not uncommon outside of government but for government agencies multiple “customers” that might have divergent desires are more frequent. But the “customer” frame of reference I still think has value.
I actually think the problem is the way people choose to interpret the idea. If I buy a car from a dealer they don’t sell it to me for $100. They don’t agree to not tell the government so I can avoid sales tax. They don’t agree to sell me a car that is not legal in the state. Customer service does not mean do what is in the interest of the customer irregardless of laws, regulations, good business practices, etc..
I would say doctors don’t give patients anti-biotics for viral infections (but actually they do). They shouldn’t. When doctors behave irresponsibly and give antibiotics in ways that harm the heath of society, some might try to claim it is because they are giving the patient/customer what they want. That is not a reasonable excuse.
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McDonald’s Branding Makes Food Tastier for Tots
The study had 63 children, aged 3 to 5 years old, tasting five pairs of identical foods and beverages — one in McDonald’s wrapping and the other in unbranded packaging. The researchers then asked them a simple question: “Which one tastes better?” An overwhelming number of the children said the food in the McDonald’s wrapping was tastier.
Oddly enough, this applied even to vegetables and milk. Sixty-one percent of the children in the study preferred the taste of carrots and 54 percent preferred the taste of milk if they were reminded by the packaging that it came from McDonald’s.
This is another reminder that tackling problems directly is not always the best strategy. The packaging doesn’t actually change the taste, but really it is not the taste that is likely a concern but rather the perception of taste. To me this is very similar to the studies on people preferring wine they are told costs more.
Ignore psychology at your peril: in marketing and in management. Deming’s management system include 4 interdependent areas: understanding variation, systems thinking, theory of knowledge and understanding psychology.
Effects of Fast Food Branding on Young Children’s Taste Preferences (I think this is the study referenced in the article though it was published in August 2007 - John).
Related: Indian researcher shows most people do judge a drink by its container - Marketing in a Lean Company - The Psychology of Too Much Choice - Be Careful What You Measure
Why is 37signals so arrogant? by Don Norman
I don’t agree. Not compromising leads to solutions that are unlikely to be all things to all people. But with an intelligent and knowledgeable leader will lead to excellent solutions for those that share desires. Now I don’t think this is the best strategy, especially for growth. But it can be an excellent strategy for startup, innovators and those seeking 1,000 fans.
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From Toyota’s blog, Living Up to Our Commitment
Once again Toyota shows what it means to go beyond the traditional way of thinking (where often MBA bean-counters and lawyers decide what should be done) instead of someone interested in having the company actually live up to a higher mission. From a previous post on their blog:
Related: Toyota IT Overview - Deming Companies - Reacting to Product Problems - Toyota Management Develops the New Camry - Corporate Blogging - Dell Innovation
There are those rare companies where interacting with them is not a dreaded experience: Trader Joe’s, Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton, Crutchfield, Cannon, Groovix. There are not many. And even just providing something that just works is seen as a treat. The all too common dis-service, combined with the internet, leads to Consumer Vigilantes:
Pretty lousy systems thinking (or really failures to think systemically). Pay executives obscenely and cut service until customers literally can’t stand you so much they don’t just want to avoid you they want you out of business.
And then instead of fixing the system, just burn the toast (follow the link for an explanation). Then wait from those that get the burnt toast to tell everyone that you sold them burnt toast. Then, after they do that, go scrape it for them. This is not what Dr. Deming meant when he encouraged companies to eliminate the need to inspect for quality. Of course you know that (you are reading this blog after all). Maybe the business schools decided to cut down Deming’s ideas to just eliminating inspection and a couple other sound bites. And then tell the MBA’s not to bother reading all the rest of that… we have to get on to the cost reduction strategies that will make sure you move into the c-level and get the real money.
But some companies just push people so far they have to let people know about how poorly they have been treated. Some past posts highlight the frustrating experiences bloggers, including me, share about how badly we have been treated: Ritz Carlton (good) and Home Depot (bad) - Incredibly Bad Customer Service from Discover Card - More Bad Customer Service Examples - Poor Service, an Industry Standard? (HP) - Comcast HD DVR Is Simply, Terribly Awful
Consumerist, is a great site, doing what it can to counter some of the horrible service.
Awhile back I wrote about why I didn’t think the American Customer Satisfaction Index claim that Yahoo beat Google for customer satisfaction was evidence of a broken indicator. Well here is another indicator, but this time it puts Google clearly in 1st place, while Yahoo has been improving: Search Engines: Intense Competition Drives Better User Experiences
Google still has plenty of room to improve (for one example, their blog search is still very poor). And Yahoo is better than many people realize. But I think Google is still clearly better from my experience and looking at the available data (Google keeps gaining market share for one import piece of data).
Related: Search Share Data, Checking the ACSI - Meeting Like Google - Improve Google
I like using Amazon, most of the time. But their decision to erect barriers for communication I find extremely annoying. Any time anything goes wrong you might as well be dealing with some organization in the middle of nowhere without phones, any internet connection or even physical mail. I ordered a printer from them a couple weeks ago. Today I get an email that “the following item from your order is not currently available for purchase. This item has been canceled from your order. If your credit card was charged, a refund has been processed.”
First, it is very lousy service to sell someone something and then figure out you don’t have it to sell a few weeks later. Second, if you find you have done such a lame thing - buy it from someone else and deliver it as promised. Third, don’t make it nearly impossible for the customer you just wronged to contact you. This is the equivalent of providing lousy service and then closing the door in someones face refusing to deal with your failure.
And if you really want your business to take those customer unfriendly actions: just sell stuff you don’t have, then tell people a couple weeks later you are not going to sell it to them after all and then tell them if you charged them (you can’t even bother to see if you did? pretty lame) then you will give them their money back it still makes sense to give them the chance to buy another printer from you instead of just closing the door.
Granted some people are going to decide they don’t want to deal with such bad service and chose to deal with a more customer focused company but some will actually still give you another chance - make it easy for them to buy another printer. For example write them instead of what I received something like: sorry for our bad service, and to show we really mean that (we are not just sending you meaningless drivel our consultant dreamed up to say we care when our actions say we don’t) we will discount a replacement printer you buy in the next two weeks by $50. Here are 5 similar printers. Follow the links to purchase one of these printers (or view many others on our site) and we will also express mail the printer selected at no additional cost.
The sad thing is that there are not many alternatives to Amazon that actually provide good service. Though Crutchfield is one - for electronics.
Related: Customer Hostility from Discover Card - Amazon Innovation - No More Lean Excuses - More Bad Customer Service Examples - 12 Stocks for 10 Years (yes including Amazon)
Does Your Product Or Service “Just Work”? By Jim Kukral
There is truth to that statement. I think largely due to how bad so many products are - that they don’t actually work. The Kano model of customer satisfaction is an excellent way to view customer expectations.
The Kano model states that you have expected quality - it just does what it needs to (what is expected). Then more is better type - give me more at the same price and I am happier. But where you really want to get as a company is products and services that delight customers.
When you are delighted you are not easy prey to other companies. When you are satisfied you are ready for offers that say we will give it to you a bit cheaper or give you a bit more. But if you are delighted you don’t want to leave and instead are telling everyone you know how great this product or service is.
I think it might be that in many cases now people are delighted if things just work. Perhaps they have become so disillusioned that something actually working is delightful - I think there is real truth here. Which shows how much room there is to improve. It is such a huge bother to deal with junk that doesn’t work and the thought of dealing with the lousy service on such failures is enough to drive them to tears.
Related: What Job Does Your Product Do? - Quality Customer Focus - Ritz Carlton and Home Depot - Good Customer Service Example - Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service - More Bad Customer Service Examples
Why Your Bank Needs a Free Coin-Counting Machine
And here’s the crazy part: The Penny Arcade is free for anyone, whether they have an account at Commerce or not. It seems like an act of corporate generosity–and, actually, it sort of is–but having Penny Arcades in a branch also benefits the bank, as I discovered when I went to use one about a month ago. In rapid succession, I noticed three things:
1. I was in the bank on a Sunday afternoon. I’ve never been in a bank on a Sunday afternoon, because no other bank I know of is open on a Sunday afternoon.
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3. I was on a line about seven people long. In addition to two tellers, there was a greeter at the entrance and a manager who walked around. About a minute into my wait on line, the manager directed the greeter to leave her post and open up a new teller window. Three minutes after that (and after about four more people joined the line) the manager himself opened up a new window.
The opportunities to improve are everywhere. It is a shame so many banks seem to focus on tricking customers into paying big fees. The idea of actually serving customer well and making a fair profit just doesn’t seem to be very common.
Related: Good Customer Service Example - What Could we do Better? - Poor Customer Service from Discover Card - Credit Card Tips
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