The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Price Discrimination and Politics
Wednesday - November 12, 2008 02:04 PM
"Price Discrimination" refers to the common practice of offering wildly different prices for very similar products, in an effort to extract more revenue from those customers willing to pay more.
Perhaps the most familiar example is the byzantine system of airfares, where the price of any given seat on an airplane might vary by a factor of five or more, depending on when the ticket was purchased, what restrictions apply, and where else the traveler is going. The price of any given plane ticket is almost completely divorced from the cost of carrying a passenger from Point A to Point B, as evidenced by the fact that tickets on nonstop flights are usually more expensive than flights with one or more stops, even though the costs incurred on the nonstop flight are lower.
Most customers hate price discrimination (it's perceived as unfair, and often results in bizarre pricing rules), so companies which practice it often hide it. Amazon.com, for example, caught some heat a few years ago when some bloggers discovered that they offered the same book for different prices to different customers.
I thought it was amusing, however, to see price discrimination appear in political fundraising of all places. This week, the Obama campaign started raising post-election money to pay for things like campaign debts, inaugural parties, and so forth. They sent e-mails to campaign donors and volunteers offering a "victory" T-shirt in exchange for a donation.
As some people quickly discovered, though, at least two versions of the e-mails went out. People who hadn't given much money got an offer to "anyone who gives $30 or more gets a free T-shirt." Those who had given at least a couple hundred bucks got the message "give $100 or more and get a free T-shirt."
Amusingly, however, after some blogs started to write about this clumsy effort at price discrimination, the larger donors got a second e-mail with the more carefully-phrased solicitation, "If you give $30 or more you'll get a T-shirt. Won't you make a donation of $100 or more?"
Posted at 02:04 PM | Permalink |
You Can Find Anything on Google
Thursday - October 30, 2008 12:56 PM
Searching for a topical theme for today's blog entry, I fell back on my usual technique: search Google for relevant terms, and find something which makes a good "hook."
After a few random search terms didn't pan out, I tried searching for "Halloween Customer Service," hoping I could find a cute story about call center agents dressed in costume, or a company which re-records its IVR prompts in a Count Dracula voice in October. Whatever.
The first item at the top of the list was Halloween Customer Service Jobs, from the MySpace Jobs board. Eight pages of job listings are available.
Whoa. I had never thought that Halloween even had customer service, much less that an entire job board might be devoted to filling positions therein.
It turns out that most of the listed positions are at party supply stores and the various transient costume stores which pop up all over the country this time of year.
It's a commentary on the super-connected ultra-globalized world we live in that you can type a somewhat nonsensical phrase like "Halloween Customer Service" into a search engine and come up with over a hundred job listings.
One final point: I started this blog entry remarking on my use of Google to try to find something to hook a blog entry onto, no matter how tangential. I think I succeeded.
Posted at 12:56 PM | Permalink |
Grains of Rice
Tuesday - October 28, 2008 01:48 PM
Lately I've been using Flickr to find interesting or amusing photos for illustrating blog entries. Type a few words in the search box, click the "Creative Commons" box, and voila! Thousands of photos on topic, at least some of which are likely to be useful.
While I was browsing today, I stumbled on this photo, which doesn't fit with anything I was planning to write about in the next few days, but it's interesting enough I wanted to pass it along.
Posted at 01:48 PM | Permalink |
Penguin Computing
Tuesday - October 21, 2008 01:55 PM
A recent server upgrade from Penguin Computing turned into the litany of customer service problems for us.
We had purchased from Penguin before, and were happy with the price and quality of the company's products. Penguin specializes in Linux server hardware, and there's a lot to be said for buying from a specialist like Penguin rather than a company which sells a little bit of everything like Dell or HP.
So when it came time to upgrade one of our servers, Penguin was on our list. The price and capabilities were right, so we placed the order back in mid-September.
The first problem came when Penguin tried to charge my credit card. I have both my home and work address as "authorized shipping addresses" on my card so I can order stuff online and have it shipped to work. Penguin's accounting system didn't care much for this arrangement, however, and interpreted the credit card company's "Charge Authorized" code as "Address Mismatch, Charge Refused."
When this happened, the person running the charge simply tried again. By the time they called me, my card had been approved for the same (expensive) server five times, completely consuming my available credit.
Once the credit card problem was squared away, we found out that a key component for our server was backordered with no shipment date in sight. When we realized that it would likely be months before our server shipped, I asked Penguin if they could offer a different model with similar specs for the same price. Penguin offered us a different model and knocked $700 off the price to match the price for the one we originally ordered.
The final goof-up came when the server was finally shipped (a month after we ordered it). Somehow Penguin attached our old address to the order (we moved about two years ago), and shipped our server to a vacant office. Fortunately FedEx caught the problem, so we received the order without any additional delay.
So will we order from Penguin again?
Probably--despite the problems, Penguin did right by us, sending us a more expensive server and eating the difference to get past the indeterminate backorder and service problems we experienced. We still like the price and quality of Penguin's products. The important thing, for me, is that the company stands behind what it sells, and they passed that test.
Posted at 01:55 PM | Permalink |
Not Always Right
Monday - October 20, 2008 02:09 PM
Here's a blog I just discovered, even though it's been around for over a year: Not Always Right.
As in, The Customer Is Not Always Right. It collects amusing anecdotes from the trenches of customer service with an emphasis on clueless, noxious, and hostile customers. It seems to be updated several times a day most days, which makes it ideal for wasting time during those slow times at work.
Posted at 02:09 PM | Permalink |
You Get What You Pay For
Monday - October 06, 2008 01:35 PM
One of the amazing side-effects of Google's success and the "Web 2.0" phenomenon is the proliferation of pretty-darn-good free services. You can now get the functional equivalent of Microsoft Office (less a few bells and whistles) without ever paying Microsoft or anyone else a penny.
So what's the catch?
Customer service and tech support, of course, as outlined in a New York Times article over the weekend (thanks to Consumerist for the link).
At the same time Moore's Law and infinite dark fiber have conspired to drive down the price of online applications, customer service involving an actual human trying to solve your problem remains as expensive as ever. So while Google and others can afford to price their basic services at zero, support will cost you.
At Google, the price is $50/year to subscribe to the "Premiere Edition." That's still a bargain compared to the price of Microsoft Office, but a lot more than free.
Posted at 01:35 PM | Permalink |
WSJ Article on Service Recovery
Monday - September 22, 2008 01:58 PM
There's a lengthy article in today's Wall Street Journal about Service Recovery: the art of turning customer service mistakes into graceful saves (the free link should work for a week or so).
There's nothing there which won't be news to people familiar with research into customer service: a graceful save can lead to more satisfied customers than not having a problem in the first place; customers, managers, and employees all have conflicting goals in customer service.
It's worth reading as a good summary.
Posted at 01:58 PM | Permalink |
Pirate Tech Support
Friday - September 19, 2008 10:33 AM
In honor of today, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I humbly present Pirate Tech Support. Best read in a growling pirate voice:
CSR: Arrr! This be pirate tech support, matey, my name be Gimpy Pete. What be yer problem?
CUSTOMER: Ahoy, Gimpy Pete, I be havin' trouble shiverin' me timbers.
CSR: Kent shiver ye timbers? Arrr! That be a problem, matey, ye could be feedin' the sharks. Ye got yer product serial number?
CUSTOMER: I don' got me no serial number, me be a pirate! Arrr!
CSR: That be good, let's be workin' the problem. Ye battoned the hatches?
CUSTOMER: Arrr!
CSR: Ye trimmed the mainsail?
CUSTOMER: Arrr!
CSR: Ye swabbed the poopdeck?
CUSTOMER: Arrr, we be bloodthirsty pirates here, there be no deck swabbin' on these worm-eaten planks!
CSR: Ye be right, I just be checkin'. I need ye to be goin' to Davey Jones' Locker, tell me when ye there.
CUSTOMER: I be there.
CSR: Now ye be openin' the locker.
CUSTOMER: It be open.
CSR: Now ye be shakn' the chains in Davey Jones' Locker.
CUSTOMER: I be shakin' the chains. Arrr! Me timbers is shiverin' agin!
CSR: Thank ye fer' callin', an' don' ferget to take the survey, or I'll make ye walk the plank.
CUSTOMER: Arrr!
Posted at 10:33 AM | Permalink |
"...to verify your identity, where were you on the night of August 17th, 1982?"
Wednesday - July 30, 2008 02:15 PM
The days when you would personally know your banker, travel agent, and Marge the local phone operator are long past. Our modern, globally connected world has brought great benefits in the form of better products, lower prices, and sophisticated services. The downside is that verifying a customer's identity has become a real problem with major consequences (such as identity theft) for failing to properly tell a real customer from an impostor.
One solution has been to use information in credit reports and public records to ask personal questions--for example, "In 1993, did you own a Honda or a Buick?" An article in Destination CRM about a new company called ID Analytics talks about some refinements to this technique: using multiple databases to ask ever more obscure questions, and scoring an individual's likelihood of being subject to identity theft in order to adjust the level of confidence required before verifying an identity.
Personally, I have some issues with this entire approach. The Emergent Chaos blog puts a finger on some of the key problems: these kinds of personal questions are annoying (and sometimes creepily intrusive), and the approach is predicated on the notion that merging a bunch of large databases together gives a more accurate and complete picture of reality.
History has shown, however, that the databases these kinds of systems rely on are often anything but accurate and complete. Credit reports are notoriously error-filled, and merging together two disparate data sets inevitably introduces entirely new mistakes. This isn't a big deal for low-stakes purposes such as targeting a direct mail campaign, but if being able to access your bank account depends on a database provider not accidentally merging your record with someone else's, then even a very low error rate is unacceptable.
Identity verification is a hard problem. My favorite solution so far is PayPal's: they sent me a cryptographic "dongle," which gives me a unique six-digit number every time I press the button. I can't access my PayPal account without providing the number, thus proving that I both know my password and have physical possession of the unique dongle registered to my account (security experts call this "two factor" authentication since it requires two distinct things, in this case something I know and something I have).
Will there ever be a foolproof way to verify identities over the phone (or online)? I don't know, but I suspect the "asking personal questions" technique is close to played out. I have a hard enough time remembering my wife's birthday--I don't need to be asked about my next-door neighbor from 20 years ago.
Posted at 02:15 PM | Permalink |
Call Center as Art
Monday - July 28, 2008 03:05 PM
"Call Cutta in a Box" bills itself as a play where the "audience" of one interacts with a call center agent in India. Performance Art might be a better term than "play," but it sounds intriguing. Instead of going to a theater, you go to a nondescript office where the phone is ringing as you arrive. On the other end is an actual call center agent on the other side of the world with an eerie connection to the room you're in:
She says she almost forgot to ask if I wanted some tea. She says whenever you are in someone's home in India you are offered either coffee or tea, and she would like to make me tea. It seems rude to say no. I hear a small click and a red light alerts me to an instant hot-water-heater on a tray with a mug, some sugar and condensed milk, and teabags. Sunayana says to pay attention to when the water boils and then to pour the tea.
It sounds like a fascinating experience, and a way to build bridges to the often-maligned people who are often the face of large companies today. It's easy to forget (when angry about the customer service treatment you're getting) that the voice on the other end of the phone is a person, too, who also has hopes and dreams, professional pride, and a family to feed--and who is most likely working under unreasonable demands.
There's also a blog written by some of the call center agents taking part in the project, and the website of the artists organizing it. No shows are currently planned in the United States, but if it ever comes to Minneapolis I'll be there.
Posted at 03:05 PM | Permalink |
A Viral Ad
Wednesday - July 09, 2008 02:30 PM
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 02:30 PM | Permalink |
Whither GetHuman?
Wednesday - June 18, 2008 02:39 PM
The aesthetically questionable and advertising-heavy site makeover was annoying enough, and the fact that the blog hasn't been updated since its first day is worrisome. Many aspects of the website look simply unprofessional.
But for me, the saddest sign was a spam e-mail I received today flogging a product called Adaptive Audio, and promoting the "Adaptive Audio - GetHuman ROI/Payback Calculator."
Beyond the generalized noxiousness of spamming me, endorsing a particular call center product is fundamentally incompatible with GetHuman's claim of consumer advocacy. At the very least it looks bad: consumers can hardly be faulted for thinking GetHuman's motives are less than pure. At worst, this creates a serious conflict of interest when an advertiser wants to promote a product at odds with GetHuman's claimed mission.
You can argue that this has already happened, since one of the claimed benefits of the Adaptive Audio product is increased "containment"--that is, reducing the fraction of callers who get to a human. I don't know enough about this product to pass judgment--it may indeed improve the caller experience--but I do know that my opinion of GetHuman has been tarnished.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 02:39 PM | Permalink |
Paying People to Quit
Thursday - May 22, 2008 02:14 PM
I've written about Zappos before, the online shoe store which has been building a reputation for do-anything-to-please customer service.
The idea is that Zappos only wants employees so committed to the company that they'll forego the bonus to work there (apparently about 10% of new hires take the money and run).
It's a fascinating idea, and I can certainly see how it would work for a hip, young startup; it's also a neat application of psychological theory: because an employee gave up a substantial bonus to work at Zappos, he's going to be biased to think it's a more desirable place to work than he would have if he hadn't made the choice.
It's also a lot cheaper to pay a couple weeks' extra pay to get rid of a potentially bad employee right away rather than pay him for months or years before finally firing him. After a month on the job, most people will know if the company is a good fit for them or not.
Despite the benefits, I can't imagine many Fortune-500 employees adopting this practice. It's just too counterintuitive, and (sadly) too many companies don't care enough about hiring only the best.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 02:14 PM | Permalink |
Why Do I Love Apple?
Thursday - May 01, 2008 01:04 PM
I've been out of the blogging loop for a couple weeks, thanks to some travel and lots of sick kids at home. So, apologies to our loyal reader (Hi, Mom!) for the long dry spell.
Posted at 01:04 PM | Permalink |
Tax Day
Tuesday - April 15, 2008 10:21 AM
It's April 15th once again, here in the United States that's Tax Day.
TeleTax lets callers listen to prerecorded informational messages on about 100 topics, and the interface is almost completely unusable. In order to hear a given message, you need to know a three-digit code identifying the particular recording you want. For example, "100" plays a recording listing the kinds of IRS help which are available to taxpayers.
If you don't happen to know the code for the information you want, there is an index available--but just navigating to the index takes over two minutes thanks to all the helpful hints about getting information from the IRS' web site (not a bad strategy, actually). No live help is available on the TeleTax line.
Worse, the system appears to have been generally neglected (again, not surprising, since I doubt many taxpayers actually find this a useful resource) with some bugs and general degradation. When I entered "253" to access a recording about alternative tax forms, I got the message "That is not a valid entry. Please enter your social security number." Apparently at some point, "2" was turned into a universal option for transferring out to the refund status line--probably when someone discovered that the vast majority of callers to TeleTax actually wanted to check on their tax refund and called the wrong number--but the entries were not reindexed to take this change into account.
So no matter how bad the IVR jail at your least-favorite bank or airline, you can take comfort in this: the IRS is worse.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 10:21 AM | Permalink |
Judge Rules Management Training Materials "Aggressively Vapid"
Friday - March 21, 2008 01:11 PM
Anyone who has spent any time working in a large company has probably been through some sort of training program. Sometimes it's useful, more often it's an excuse to get paid for eating bagels and drinking coffee for a day.
The judge disagreed, apparently ruling that copyright law applies to "original creative works," and that the management training materials were neither original nor creative:
"These works exemplify the sorts of training programs that serve as fodder for sardonic workplace humor that has given rise to the popular television show The Office and the movie Office Space. They are aggressively vapid-hundreds of pages filled with generalizations, platitudes, and observations of the obvious."
All across the country, office workers applaud Judge Young for recognizing the, well, obvious.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 01:11 PM | Permalink |
Extra! Extra! Customers Still Fed Up
Thursday - March 20, 2008 11:01 AM
"Customers are angry about customer service" is a staple of consumer reporting. If I passed along every one of those articles, this would be the "Customers Angry About Service" blog.
Enjoy!
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 11:01 AM | Permalink |
It's 3 AM at the White House
Wednesday - March 12, 2008 01:00 PM
Posted at 01:00 PM | Permalink |
More Ink
Monday - March 10, 2008 01:17 PM
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 01:17 PM | Permalink |