The software industry is faced with a challenge common to other industries; too many good ideas, and not enough time and money to implement them all. This simple fact can hinder customer service if handled poorly. When examining customer feature requests (either new ones or product modifications) there are two classifications: healthy and unhealthy.
Healthy
Implement the Customer’s Request – No mystery here, right? Good and easy ideas reach consensus quickly. When many customers share a need the marketplace self-validates.
Reject or Decline the Idea Quickly – Don’t confuse rejecting an idea with ignoring it. Rejected ideas deserve greater consideration than implemented ideas. Your company must provide a strong explanation regarding why an idea would be rejected. This rejection is a conversation with your customer. “I heard you, I considered the idea, yet we will be pursuing another direction.” Notice that healthy does not mean, without pain. Customers whose ideas are declined will not be happy yet those same customers will respect your honesty. That honesty breeds confidence which in turn enables open dialogue which yields future business opportunities.
Unhealthy
Provide Lip Service – Letting ideas meander aimlessly along the river Styx to suffer purgatory in an under review status is a coward’s way to work with customers and it does nothing to forge a lasting relationship.
Ignore the Request – When ideas are never considered companies send a strong, though silent, message: “your needs don’t matter.” One of the golden rules of service is listening to customers. If companies fail this most basic of tests they should expect to lose customers.
The pivot point is that when fulfilling customers’ requests, whether for a type of service, a new product, or a product modification, rejecting customers’ requests (with tact) is an acceptable alternative. Rejection hurts, but so does being strung along. And no one wants that in their relationship.
In MIT’s Sloan Management Review Julian Birkinshaw and Suzanne Heywood miss an opportunity at a fun knock-out title, so I’ll take it. However, the content is an excellent view into how complexity can negatively impact a business’s ability to function effectively.
Let’s follow the trail…
If your company is too big to manage, then by default it is unmanaged.
If your company is unmanaged, its survival relies on chance (good luck or bad).
If your company has bad luck then it fails.
Thus, if your company is too big to manage, it is too big to succeed. (Of course, your company could have good luck. Good luck with that plan.)
After interviewing executives at 900 companies Birkinshaw and Heywood found complexity caused problems,
“…from weak customer responsiveness and inefficient processes to high levels of confusion and stress among employees.”
As a customer advocate let me hone in on how complexity can hurt customers.
Lost Customers – Organization complexity can mean that customers don’t know who to contact to receive support. Companies are so complicated that they need to hire gate-keepers. These gate-keepers are a source of knowledge but only of the organization type. Their domain expertise is to know who to contact for what. They are the yellow pages of complex companies.
Expensive Products – Complex products hinder product implementation, thus adoption, thus any chance at realizing ROI (whether ROI is measured in dollars or happiness). How much positive word of mouth marketing should you expect to garner when the product can’t be used?
Slow Responses – Complexity can reduce the speed in getting answers to simple questions which may open the door to competitors. When do customers welcome slow service when the competition can provide the same service faster?
Stuck in Neutral – Customers can’t purchase a product they need when they need it. Complex processes delay or prevent sales from being completed. How many times has a contract been so convoluted that the customer did not know to what they were agreeing?
The pivot point is that when complexity gets in the way of satisfying customers, big problems are on the horizon… unless you’re fortunate enough to receive a federal bailout. Then, even if your company is “too big to manage” and indeed, “too big to fail”, it may also be “too big to succeed”, which in the end is just “too bad for customers.”
I urge you to read an article titled “At the Base of the Pyramid”. I disagree with much of it, but I guarantee a thought-provoking article.
For instance:
P&G states that “the real hurdle to cross when introducing a new product, in any market, is helping the consumer understand the benefit of doing something in a different way.”
Consumers “haven’t been conditioned to think that the products being offered are something one would even buy.” Sounds like consumers need a ringing bell to jump-start their Pavlovian response into purchasing bliss.
Marketers “must make the idea of paying money for the products seem natural, and they must induce consumers to fit those goods into their long-held routines.”
What?!
The fact that companies can induce customers into making a purchase is part of what makes capitalism work, but it also plays a part (think fast food) in why 18.9% of adults in the healthiest state (Colorado) are clinically obese. Can slick marketing increase sales? Sure, but at what cost? Instead:
Make products valuable to consumers so paying isnatural. Then there will be no need to induce them to purchase.
Start with the consumer and deliver a product that meets a need. That alone should provide the foundation for a business plan.
The pivot point is that we will all be better off if we identify what consumers need, versus what we can get them to pay for. It doesn’t matter whether the market is the Third World or Disney World.
(Towards the end of the article you’ll notice that the author’s intent is to encourage (and enlist) community support when developing a market. Part of that development is to: see which products might be useful, determine which ones would be profitable to ultimately answer the question of which products consumers will value. Now that makes sense!)
I’m all for efficiency. But if your definition of service efficiency is to replace listening with copying, as it seems to be with Spoken Communications Inc. who recently announced plans to acquire GotVoice, you haven’t done much to improve customer service.
Sidebar: GotVoice’s claim to have the “most error-free voice-to-text translation services today” seems hollow when you realize that “most” may only mean 1% correct. (Have you ever ordered a pizza using from Pizza Hut using similar “intelligent” technology? It’s a small wonder they come with cheese after the gyrations the user has to go through to place an order.) Make a commitment a customer can depend on!
The problem isn’t GotVoice, however. Spoken Communications is trying to apply the wrong technology to a non-problem. The premise is simple: that customer’s voicemails can be converted to text and used to create trouble incidents or cases.
The issue they will encounter is that on an emotional plane people want tocommunicate; to hear and be heard. Customers need to communicate. Removing the give and take, eliminating the interactivity between customers and service providers destroys anything other than the most sterile of interactions. Customers aren’t going to like it one bit. Eventually, customer’s messages will be so brief as to contain only a phone number and name.
What is more likely to happen is the illusion of progress (a shell game of merely moving costs). The front end of the process (taking the call) may seem more cost efficient because the representatives who once took calls can be eliminated or reapportioned to more valuable endeavors. Eventually, a person will have to listen, respond, and uncover the root problem. That cost won’t go away. Counter to the goals, the company may actually unwittingly introduce added delay to the ultimate solution.
In fairness, the model could work for very simple problems. But so would an answering machine/service.
The pivot point is that customers crave interaction and deserve service. If the proposed solution satisfies customers’ needs while simultaneously helping companies reduce costs, then the acquisition and the plans for putting the two technologies together makes sense and I’ll be proven wrong. As it stands, the customer gets nothing… and that will be hard to sell.
If your company is like most you have problems with customer service. Those problems may emanate from poor products, over-sold capabilities or legitimately bad service itself. Despite our efforts to get service right we all inevitably have problems. It makes sense to plan what to do when things look darkest.
Apologize – Start with thank you. It changes the tone of the conversation. Be brief and to the point. You’ve already messed up… and the customer knows it. Nonetheless, and honest thank you followed by an honest apology is the beginning. A Complaint is a Gift is a good book to help change your point of view.
Use Empathy, Not Sympathy – I see this mistake a lot. People have been trained to be sympathetic when a customer complains to understand their pain. (And it sure beats the alternative of being uncaring!) People servicing customers view the issue as “the other guy’s” problem. A more appropriate reaction would be empathy because, in fact, you own it too. The difference is in sympathy you take the point of view that “I feel bad for you” whereas in empathy the point of view is “I feel bad with you.” Conveying this sense that you share their pain makes you collaborators in the solution and this translates to better support. Tony Tjan mentions empathy as an advantage for small companies, but there is no reason a large company can’t deliver the goods too.
Communicate – If the problem will take some time to resolve, gather the necessary information, let the customer go – then get busy. It’s important to over-communicate time lines and actions. At my company we have a mantra we live by – under promise and over deliver. Be better than your commitment! This is a good time to ask your customer which way to rectify a problem – that is, of several options, does one work better for them?
Follow-Up – Eventually, they will want to know what you’re going to do about it. Depending on the severity of the problem/complaint, the customer may have several stages of emotion to pass through. Even if your customer called to vent, they still expect you to do something. And in the previous step you said what you would do and when. Make it happen.
Surprise Your Customer – Disney presents the model for recovery. Kids invariably get separated from their parents at Disney resorts. These events make a BIG impression on parents and children alike. When parent and child are reunited, the child is invited to lead the parade down Main Street. Disney turns getting lost, which is traumatic, into a memorable event.
Think about it, if your company makes a mistake and you can recover so well that the customer speaks only about what you did to make things more than right, you’ll have a customer for life – and an advocate who will sing your praises.
The pivot point is that customers are willing to accept honest mistakes provided you take a common sense approach to resolving their issue. But let’s face it, to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat you have to actively transform common sense into common practice.
