Happy employees; ARMA news

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

We’ve discussed on the blog that happy employees are better able to give better customer service. It stands to reason that if your staff is happy, they will be more willing to do their job cheerfully and helpfully.  There is a new list of the top ten “happiest retailers” that ranks Costco as the top retailer.  Second on the list is Nordstrom, which is known for good customer service. However, other retailers like L.L. Bean and Zappos, which are perennial customer service giants, are not in the top ten.

We’d love to see a study that correlates worker happiness with customer service performance.

In news that is closer to home, we are excited to share with you that ARMA has recently relocated its headquarters to the Silver Spring Metro Plaza. We are now across from the Silver Spring Metro stop, in class “A” office space.  Read the press release. With our expanded office space,  we hope to continue to grow our customer base, and give the highest customer service.

Tags: ARMA headquarters, happy employees, role of hap
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Giving thanks!

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

Thank you.

Those two words express gratitude and appreciation, sentiments that should be at the top of any customer service driven organization. And certainly, celebrating Thanksgiving reminds us that we are grateful for our customers and their patronage and support.

John Kennedy once said:

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

ARMA gives thanks for our customers and for the readers of our blog. We we wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Tags: ARMA Thanksgiving, giving thanks, Thanksgiving
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Avoid being blacklisted

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Customer service is a great differentiator.  Poor customer service will set you apart, and not in a good way. Around this time of the year we start seeing lists: top ten best companies, top ten worst companies, and so forth. Consumer Reports has a “Naughty & Nice Holiday List,” which identifies companies on their shopping policies (which, of course, are part of customer service).  The Orlando Sentinel has an article on the list. Among the policies that are “naughty” are excessive charges to end contract agreements, charging for shipping, and other non-customer-friendly options.  “Nice” retailers are the eternally customer service savvy Zappos and L.L. Bean.

Even if your company is not big enough to end up on a national list, you don’t want to be blacklisted even among one customer (and his/her circle because of the power of word-of-mouth). Make sure you have customer friendly policies on your books, and customer friendly staff. The  Local Plumbers Blog has five great customer service tips (read the whole article), which are:

1. Improve employee relations
2. Make changes
3. Value current customers
4. Keep your promises
5. Answer your phone correctly

It is amazing how many small business (and big ones for that matter) fail on this simple and self-evident tactics.  How many times have you called somewhere and had someone answer hello while obviously eating, so much so that you ask is this Joe’s Pizza?  Or businesses who fail to deliver what and when they promise. Or businesses that go all out looking for new business at the expense of their current customers.

Make it a point to be listed as having good or excellent customer service. That is the only list to be on.

Tags: Consumer Reports Naughty and Nice, customer service lists, improving customer service
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Forces that you can control

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

Social media has created an avenue for people who are unhappy with how companies are treating them to air their complaints–loudly and publicly. Unhappy customers can go on Facebook and Twitter and tell hundreds if not thousands of people that they have been mistreated. This poses a significant threat for companies and some have worked to address this.

Brett Greene had a bad experience trying to cancel his Vonage service. It took him talking about it on Twitter to his 30,000 followers to get response from the company. Greene details his travails on Huffington Post (a widely read current affairs blog) in the article “How Social Media Influences Customer Service.” Greene’s conclusion is that social media is a game changer and should be taken into consideration. He writes:

This isn’t a Vonage issue as much as an issue with doing business the old way versus the social business way. We’ve all had similar experiences and wasted dozens of hours with companies that continue to use antiquated customer service systems.

All they have to do to make the systems better is to treat customers like people instead of dollars. Companies should stop forcing customer service representatives to behave like robots, for fear of upsetting their supervisors when the best resolution is to give the customers what they want — even if that means to cancel service.

Companies that work to please customers instead of trying to leverage every last dollar out of them do better in customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. This with what Mary Pearson argues in the Financial Post. She also provides some very worthwhile tips for an organizational head.  She writes:

When it comes to good customer service, it’s not what the organization declares in advertising and posted vision statements that count, but what they do and how they treat people. Action and putting resources in place speaks louder than words.

Read more: http://www.financialpost.com/careers/Workplace+Shaman+excel+customer+service/3835696/story.html#ixzz15dkIEuov

Tags: brett greene, customer service focus on customers, social media influences customer service, vonage customer service
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Evaluating and correcting

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

When you are public utility like the electric company or a telephone company, if you aren’t providing good customer service, customers can complain about you to a regulating commission or even to the state’s attorney general. In fact, this seems to be the only way for customers to voice their complaints with an utility company. Why does it get to that point? There are probably several causes, but one cause is likely that these companies are not evaluating their customer service operation against any type of benchmark.

To evaluate customer service, there are both qualitative and quantitative methods to use. On the qualitative side, companies may wish to survey customers about how they felt the service call went, whether they felt they were treated correctly and so forth. On the quantitative side, companies can measure how long a customer waits to speak to an agent, how long is an average call, how many of each issue are dealt with each day (billing, product defect, questions, etc.).  It would then be useful for the company to establish benchmarks and goals in each category.

Evaluation and measurement are not enough, however. Companies need to take corrective actions. For instance, if wait time was normally five minutes and has risen to 10 minutes, companies will need to either increase the number of agents, or better route calls or figure out if there is a company-wide problem that would be better addressed pro-actively.

In the end, companies that don’t evaluate their offerings have no reliable way of knowing how they are doing. It should not take a call from a customer complain bureau like the Better Business Bureau or the state attorney’s office to determine that there is a problem.

Evaluation and correction can certainly increase the efficiency and efficacy of your customer service.

Tags: benchmarks in customer service, evaluation of customer service
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Putting the customer first

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

Bloomberg BusinessWeek  published an interview with Home Depot’s Executive Vice President Marvin Ellison. Ellison discussed how the company has sharpened its focus on providing top customer service. There is much to learn in this interview.

• Good customer service creates customers who promote your business. “Promoters” help a business grow.
• Associates have one task: focus on the customer.
• Survey your customers to know where you stand.
• Train your associates (Home Depot has a curriculum called Customer FIRST).
• Conduct performance reviews of your associates against the priorities you have defined.
• Reward associates who provide exceptional customer service.

The upside of the focus on customers and customer service can be seen in sales. Ellison says the following:

We are looking at ways to measure the exact impact our efforts have had on sales. The first and second quarters of this year were our first positive comp quarters in the U.S. since 2005. The economy has been a little better, but our associates’ efforts have played a role, too. We have a very simple belief: If you combine a compelling merchandising offer with outstanding customer service, you will get improved transactions. And in our business, improved transactions lead to positive sales growth.

Home Depot has made a commitment to its customers, and may be reaping the rewards.

Tags: Home Depot and customer service, lessons in customer service from Home Depot, Marvin Ellison
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Bad customer service is memorable

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

When customers gets poor customer service or no service at all,  they remember it. And it is not a good or positive memory either. It gets them upset or angry or even destructive.

CBS Sunday Morning had a segment on the show this past Sunday about customer service.  They recounted the story of the Virginia woman who was so angry at Comcast and its lack of customer service, that she took a hammer to the Comcast office and starting banging on the counter to get somebody’s attention. The segment discussed how much it costs to provide live customer service–it is much cheaper to use phone trees. It talked about people having to hold for hours to get service.

Sadly, many companies provide bad service, causing increasing customer rage. Customers will remember the company—in a very negative way. And they will bad mouth the company.  A company’s reputation can be severely damaged by bad customer interactions.  The impact to reputation SHOULD be a part of the decision to fund customer service. In monetary cost, as the CBS piece indicated, a live call in the United States costs about $7 or $ 8.  However, the damage to credibility amount consumers also has a cost, but one that is not easily measured in monetary terms.

Reputation may be the most important thing a company needs to protect.  Companies should think twice about becoming known as purveyors of bad customer service.

Tags: cost of bad customer service, customer service and company reputation, the importance of reputation in business
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Should you go undercover?

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Undercover Boss is a popular show on CBS because it shows just how out of touch CEOs are with their employees and the day-to-day operations of their businesses. It always seems instructive for the CEOs to see what their employees deal with and what it actually takes to get the job done.

Carol Tice analyzes the Undercover Boss experience at Entrepreneur.com, on a blog post entitled “What the Bosses Learned from Undercover Boss.” She writes the following:

As a small-business CEO, it’s harder to anonymously pose as a new hire. Usually, everybody knows your face. You’re also probably more aware of what workers do at your company than some of these out-of-touch bigger-company bosses. So most entrepreneurs will probably have to extrapolate from the lessons of Undercover Boss, since owners can’t really do this themselves.

But it might pay off to work that front counter or warehouse sometime, if you get a chance. If these bosses’ experiences are any indication, the boss doesn’t always know what’s really going on. You might learn more about a great worker, or a policy that needs changing.

In one episode of the show, one of the bosses had to work the phones at a customer service center. He made a mistake off the bat, calling a customer sir instead of ma’am.  Understandable since the caller had a deep voice but embarrassing nonetheless.  In any case, it gave the CEO a taste of how easy it is to mess up on the phone with  a customer.  Many different conclusions could be drawn from this, but the most important is that CEOs  need to understand what is involved in providing top-notch customer service. They should be aware of any constraints and obstacles their employees face.

Maybe it is time to go check out your customer service operation.

Tags: CEOs learning about customer service, Undercover Boss
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It starts with a vision and your employees

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

How do you ensure top-notch customer service? If you are the head of an organization,  before anything else, you must commit to providing excellent customer service. To do this,  create mission and vision statements that reflect your commitment.  In other words, put it in writing. Make it one of the pillars of your organization.

However, you cannot stop at a nicely crafted mission and vision statement. You must translate that into action at the ground level, in the every day interactions your employees have with your customers. This is probably the hardest part of ensuring quality customer service. After all, your employees are human beings, subject to bad days and bad tempers, and sometimes that affects your customers. How do you minimize the problems?

It has become apparent that the companies that provide the best customer service are also the companies where employees are happiest. This makes total sense. Happy employees are loyal and willing to contribute to building an organization they believe in.  The question for you is how to make your employees happy to be at your organization.

On the Service Untitled blog, Cheryl writes “Look After you Staff and They Will Look After Your Customer. She provides some suggestions on actions you can take to help create a positive environment for your employees:

• Initiate high quality training programs.
• CEO and all leaders need to be available.
• Encourage employees with positive feedback.
• Encourage new ideas and innovative thinking.
• Respect employees for having both work and family lives.
• Be fair and consistent.
• Encourage employees to own their customers and work out problems. Offer assistance when needed.
• Encourage feedback.
• Be an example for employees.

Tags: customer service mission, customer service vision, role of happy employees in customer service
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