Tag Archives: customer service

When Companies Can Treat You Like an ATM, Many Will Do So

Posted on August 29, 2011 by John Hunter

The End of Refrigeration One small custom chip, some relays, a transformer, a couple of heat sinks, and a bunch of passive parts. Maybe a build cost of $20-30 or so? But GE’s price to me was $250, plus $150 for the 20 minutes it took to pull out the old one and swap in the new one. Paying $400 for a big piece of physical gear plus a couple hours of labor didn’t bother me. Paying $400 for a … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Investing, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Delighting Customers

Posted on July 26, 2010 by John Hunter

If you have customers that see you as adequate you will keep customers based on inertia. But you have several big problems awaiting you. Those trying to win your customers business only have to overcome inertia – which can be very low hurdle (saving a small bit of money, some minor additional feature). If your customers are delighted they won’t leave (by and large) without significant reasons to. Also your attempts to increase price are very likely to lead to … Continue reading →

Posted in Competition, Customer focus, Deming, Management, Process improvement, quote | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Aligning Marketing Vision and Management

Posted on March 23, 2010 by John Hunter

Why do so many companies market one thing and provide something else? I know it might be easier to sell something different than what you offer your customer today. But if you decide to market one vision, why don’t you change your organization to actually offer that? I suspect this is substantially due to the outsourced nature of large marketing efforts. It makes sense to me that when you outsource your marketing message creation it isn’t tied to your management … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Popular, quote, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Lean Inventories Do Not Excuse Failing to Deliver

Posted on November 20, 2009 by John Hunter

Low inventory levels do not mean failing to have products available for customers. Now, if you manufacturing in huge batches and can’t respond to customer feedback then it might mean failure to predict customer demand does mean failure to deliver. But lean thinking has shown how to avoid this problem. People need to adopt lean manufacturing practices and gain the benefits of low inventory levels without the costs of failing to deliver what customers want. Sorry Santa, We’re Out of … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Lean thinking, Management, Manufacturing, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Zappos and Amazon Sitting in a Tree…

Posted on July 23, 2009 by John Hunter

Amazon is acquiring the unique company – Zappos: we have written about Zappos previously: Paying New Employees to Quit. Jeff Bezos uses the webcast above to talk to the employees of Zappos. Excellent job. The letter from Tony Hsieh, the Zappo’s CEO, to employees is fantastic. This is a CEO that respects employees. These are leaders I would follow and invest in (and in fact I am glad I do own Amazon stock). First, I want to apologize for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Deming, Fun, Innovation, Investing, Management, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Management By IT Crowd Bosses

Posted on July 9, 2009 by John Hunter

The IT Crowd is a great BBC show on an IT support office in a large organization. The IT staff are knowledgeable and tired of dealing with foolish users of IT. And you wouldn’t want to watch for any customer support tips (though companies like United Airlines might do just that). Anyone involved in IT know Internet Explorer 6 is not an acceptable tool in this day and age. But some IT departments don’t let that stop them from forcing … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Management, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

United Breaks Guitars

Posted on July 7, 2009 by John Hunter

Unfortunately companies like United have created cultures where people take pride in doing their job poorly. And the continued long term customer hostility companies take shows no sign of letting up. My suggestion is to take Southwest or Jet Blue (or Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific). Unfortunately sometimes you need to travel somewhere that no airline that cares about customer service flies. Then just hope somehow the broken system you must trust to get you someplace somehow doesn’t fail you … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, webcast | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Computer Network Operations Center Failures

Posted on July 3, 2009 by John Hunter

Obviously many businesses are now dependent on computer Network Operations Centers (NOC). Some of these data centers can cause millions of dollars in lost sales each minute if they fail. So sound engineering, including off-site redundancy is critical. Authorize.net is a recent example of such a failure, Authorize.net Goes Down, E-Commerce Vendors Left Hanging Payment gateway service provider Authorize.net has been down and out for several hours… That has big implications: since the service is used by tens of thousands … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Economics, IT, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , ,

Creating Customers For Life

Posted on December 18, 2008 by John Hunter

Shopping at Trader Joe’s is odd. The workers actually seem like they like that they have customers. Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Management Articles, Popular, Respect | Tagged ,

Paying New Employees to Quit

Posted on May 25, 2008 by John Hunter

[the video is no longer available] 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 [Harvard broke the link so I removed it – they should pay those responsible (most likely an executive, technical people know better but bad management breaks things) for not maintaining urls to quit]: Zappos sells shoes—lots of them—over the Internet. The company … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Innovation, Management, Respect, webcast | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Confusing Customer Focus

Posted on April 10, 2008 by John Hunter

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Public Sector | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Good Customer Service Example

Posted on July 9, 2007 by John Hunter

IRA Toyota – Milford; Great Service [the broken link was removed] I was pleasantly surprised to find a “Service wizard” available. You create an account, specify the standard details about the car (make, model, year, mileage). If you add the VIN, they will be able to provide and maintain additional details. The slickest part of the wizard was the capability to pick a service and schedule a date. Depending upon what service you picked, the calendar changed. This wasn’t any … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, IT, Management, Quality tools, Systems thinking | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Innovation Thinking with Christensen

Posted on June 16, 2007 by John Hunter

In my opinion Clayton Christensen offers truly insightful ideas on innovation and management. He presents the rare management advice that is not only good but also new – an incredibly rare combination. The current issue of Business Week includes an interview with him: Clayton Christensen’s Innovation Brain: Yes. The problem is when you say “listen to your customers,” your customers are only going to lead you in a direction that they want to go in. Generally, that will never lead … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Innovation, Management, Management Articles | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service

Posted on February 20, 2007 by John Hunter

Once again Joel Spolsky spins a great post with, Seven steps to remarkable customer service. Read it. It’s crucial that tech support have access to the development team. This means that you can’t outsource tech support: they have to be right there at the same street address as the developers, with a way to get things fixed. This idea is powerful yet ignored by most companies. Management must look at the best way to improve the entire system not to … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, IT, Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Good Customer Service Example

Posted on March 26, 2006 by John Hunter

No More Lean Excuses [the broken link was removed] by Dan Jones I have recently been getting a striking reaction from many senior management audiences. They all agree that products have got vastly better over recent years, but they equally agree that the process of ordering and buying them and getting them serviced has got worse! This is a theme in Jones and Womack’s recent book: Lean Solutions. Recently I bought a new digital camera, Canon A700. Part of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Lean thinking, Management | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Customer Focus

Posted on March 15, 2006 by John Hunter

Winning With Service [the broken link was removed] by John Teresko: “From our viewpoint, machines are increasingly more difficult to differentiate for most applications,” admits Harry C. Moser, president, Agie Charmilles Corp., Lincolnshire, Ill. “There are many good competitors, and while we think our products are the best, for a lot of applications it is getting increasingly hard to prove, and therefore we have chosen to [also] differentiate via service. Service can be a great differentiator, if you can do … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management Articles | Tagged ,