The Customer Service Survey
Above and Beyond
Surprising the Customer
Wed - February 20, 2008 04:23 PM
Via Consumerist, here's a fascinating story about the intersection of customer service and marketing from Zappos, an online shoe company trying to be known for its top-notch service.
Back in the good old days of 2007, Zappos had a policy of free overnight shipping for all orders. Recently they changed this to free 4-5 day shipping, and a $25 charge for overnight delivery.
But behind the scenes, what changed? Nothing. Most orders (including the ones with free shipping) continue to be sent out overnight for next day delivery.
Apparently they did some market research and discovered that it was more powerful to provide unexpected free overnight delivery than to advertise the same level of service. So by switching to an extra charge for next day shipping, Zappos wins in three ways:
1) Customers come away from the experience "wowed" with the quality of service.
2) Zappos gains some extra shipping flexibility in case of a surge in orders, snowstorm, or other disruptive event.
3) Zappos gains extra revenue from those people willing to pay for guaranteed overnight shipping.
This is the kind of winning service formula I like. In a world where indifferent service is the norm, Zappos has decided to differentiate itself by surprising just about every customer by providing better service than expected. Judging from the comments on Consumerist, they've earned a lot of loyalty as a result.
Posted by Peter Leppik
But behind the scenes, what changed? Nothing. Most orders (including the ones with free shipping) continue to be sent out overnight for next day delivery.
Apparently they did some market research and discovered that it was more powerful to provide unexpected free overnight delivery than to advertise the same level of service. So by switching to an extra charge for next day shipping, Zappos wins in three ways:
1) Customers come away from the experience "wowed" with the quality of service.
2) Zappos gains some extra shipping flexibility in case of a surge in orders, snowstorm, or other disruptive event.
3) Zappos gains extra revenue from those people willing to pay for guaranteed overnight shipping.
This is the kind of winning service formula I like. In a world where indifferent service is the norm, Zappos has decided to differentiate itself by surprising just about every customer by providing better service than expected. Judging from the comments on Consumerist, they've earned a lot of loyalty as a result.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Send the customer to a competitor?
Wed - January 9, 2008 03:34 PM
Here's an above and beyond story which will leave many shaking their heads. Crazy? Like a fox:
Tom Negrino was looking for a particular pair of shoes, and called Zappos. They didn't have that model, so the customer service agent actually sent Tom to a competitor's website.
And stayed on the phone to help him make the purchase.
Now, it's entirely likely that Tom would have been happy if the agent had simply offered him a comparable pair of shoes, and Zappos would have made a sale.
Instead, they went above and beyond to help him find exactly what he was looking for, and gave up the near-term revenue. You can bet, however, that the next time Tom needs shoes, he'll go to Zappos first. And probably the time after that, and the time after that....
Plus you can't beat the free publicity of getting written up here on The Customer Service Survey.
Posted by Peter Leppik
And stayed on the phone to help him make the purchase.
Now, it's entirely likely that Tom would have been happy if the agent had simply offered him a comparable pair of shoes, and Zappos would have made a sale.
Instead, they went above and beyond to help him find exactly what he was looking for, and gave up the near-term revenue. You can bet, however, that the next time Tom needs shoes, he'll go to Zappos first. And probably the time after that, and the time after that....
Plus you can't beat the free publicity of getting written up here on The Customer Service Survey.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Say it ain't so!
Tue - July 31, 2007 11:41 AM
Falling in love is hard, because there's always the risk that your beloved will break your heart.
So it seems, then, that my favorite airline, Midwest Airlines, is considering selling itself to AirTran. That's like the beautiful princess thinking about marrying the ogre. Shreknotwithstanding, that's just not the ending you want to see.
Midwest is famous for its comfy seats, outstanding customer service, and baked-on-board chocolate chip cookies. AirTran is famous for being grounded by the FAA after maintenance problems and a fatal crash back in the mid-90's when the company was called ValuJet.
Midwest scores an impressive +0.43 on the VocaLabs Sucks Rocks Index, while AirTran gets only a mediocre -0.58.
Need I go on?
Posted by Peter Leppik
Midwest is famous for its comfy seats, outstanding customer service, and baked-on-board chocolate chip cookies. AirTran is famous for being grounded by the FAA after maintenance problems and a fatal crash back in the mid-90's when the company was called ValuJet.
Midwest scores an impressive +0.43 on the VocaLabs Sucks Rocks Index, while AirTran gets only a mediocre -0.58.
Need I go on?
Posted by Peter Leppik
Apple Fails to Disappoint
Tue - July 24, 2007 04:13 PM
It's no secret by now that I really like my iPhone, and one of the key reasons is that I don't have to deal with mobile phone customer service.
Today came another test. Over the weekend, the touch screen on my phone started going a little flaky and stopped recognizing the bottom row on the virtual keyboard. So I took the phone back to the Apple store. The salesperson (I feel silly using "genius" as a job title) confirmed the problem in three seconds, got a new phone from the back of the store, moved my SIM card, and sent me on my way with a new phone.
I spent a grand total of 20 minutes getting my problem solved, of which 15 minutes was spent futzing with the new phone, updating my information in Apple's records, and similar minor chores. There was no fuss, no hassle, no arguments. Just, "Yep, phone's not working right, let me get you a new one."
I took my phone back to the office, plugged it into my laptop, and it automatically restored everything. The entire process was astonishingly pain-free. I didn't even have to reset my wallpaper.
I've had my iPhone for three weeks now, and apparently Apple's policy is to repair (not replace) iPhones which break under warranty after more than two weeks. The salesperson made an exception for me without even being asked (apparently because "we've had a couple other phones come back with touch-screen problems")--though the repair process is apparently also painless. They ship off your phone for repair, give you a loaner, and mail back the repaired phone within a couple days. Since the loaner phone can be synced from your computer, you're never without a phone which has all your data and contacts.
Why can't companies other than Apple figure out how to make this work?
Posted by Peter Leppik
I spent a grand total of 20 minutes getting my problem solved, of which 15 minutes was spent futzing with the new phone, updating my information in Apple's records, and similar minor chores. There was no fuss, no hassle, no arguments. Just, "Yep, phone's not working right, let me get you a new one."
I took my phone back to the office, plugged it into my laptop, and it automatically restored everything. The entire process was astonishingly pain-free. I didn't even have to reset my wallpaper.
I've had my iPhone for three weeks now, and apparently Apple's policy is to repair (not replace) iPhones which break under warranty after more than two weeks. The salesperson made an exception for me without even being asked (apparently because "we've had a couple other phones come back with touch-screen problems")--though the repair process is apparently also painless. They ship off your phone for repair, give you a loaner, and mail back the repaired phone within a couple days. Since the loaner phone can be synced from your computer, you're never without a phone which has all your data and contacts.
Why can't companies other than Apple figure out how to make this work?
Posted by Peter Leppik
Open Letter to Steve Jobs
Tue - July 3, 2007 02:01 PM
Dear Mr. Jobs:
Yesterday I bought a shiny new Apple iPhone, to replace my falling-apart Treo 650. I have to congratulate Apple on managing to do what has been heretofore impossible: building a mobile phone which doesn't suck.
Yesterday I bought a shiny new Apple iPhone, to replace my falling-apart Treo 650. I have to congratulate Apple on managing to do what has been heretofore impossible: building a mobile phone which doesn't suck.
The phone and the interface are, of course, beautiful. I have to admit some trepidation about the AT&T mobile phone service, though.
I run a company which measures call center and IVR quality through customer surveys, and last year about half our business was for clients in the mobile phone industry. We've been tracking call centers at the big four (formerly big five) carriers for over three years, and we're regularly brought in to help evaluate new IVR systems for the major mobile carriers.
So I know a thing or two about good customer service, especially in the mobile phone business. The industry as a whole has a poor reputation, and Cingular/AT&T--despite substantial improvement in the past couple years--has not been at the top of the heap.
My fear was about what would happen when I needed to talk to someone about my beautiful new iPhone. Would I be forced to endure the indignity of bad customer service which is so common today? Would I be treated as a cost to be minimized, rather than a customer and partner in your success?
As it happens, I did encounter a problem with my new iPhone: 18 hours after I set up my phone, my phone number had not transferred from my old phone on a different carrier. The industry standard is that mobile numbers should be transferred within three hours, so I knew there was something wrong.
This morning I followed my usual routine when I have to call tech support: I cleared a block of time from my calendar, loaded today's newspaper in my web browser, and sat at my desk with the speakerphone prepared to wait for the next available agent. Imagine my surprise when my call was transferred directly to a customer service representative, with only the briefest stop for a "this call may be recorded" message. No menus, no demands that I enter my account number, no attempts to sidetrack me into an irrelevant self-service option. I didn't even have time to scan the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
The representative was polite, efficient, and had my phone working within five minutes. She even called me on my iPhone to verify that I could now receive calls.
I was impressed. Suspicious, I asked the agent about the service I was getting, and she told me that iPhone customers get their own customer service phone number, which goes straight to a group of specially-trained agents. Perhaps I would have had to wait longer if I'd called over the weekend during the crush of initial sales, but by this morning I could get the premium level of service appropriate for a customer who just bought an expensive new phone and committed to two years of service.
I don't know how you convinced a large mobile phone company to take such a customer-friendly approach, but it happened.
I think that you understand the key principle of customer service which most companies have a hard time grasping: Customer service is just as much a part of the product as the battery, display, and buttons. Premium service, like premium design, commands a premium price.
My iPhone is not perfect, but I am impressed with the product and the experience so far. Thank you, Mr. Jobs, for finally bringing a mobile phone company to treat me as a customer and not a nuisance.
Posted by Peter Leppik
I run a company which measures call center and IVR quality through customer surveys, and last year about half our business was for clients in the mobile phone industry. We've been tracking call centers at the big four (formerly big five) carriers for over three years, and we're regularly brought in to help evaluate new IVR systems for the major mobile carriers.
So I know a thing or two about good customer service, especially in the mobile phone business. The industry as a whole has a poor reputation, and Cingular/AT&T--despite substantial improvement in the past couple years--has not been at the top of the heap.
My fear was about what would happen when I needed to talk to someone about my beautiful new iPhone. Would I be forced to endure the indignity of bad customer service which is so common today? Would I be treated as a cost to be minimized, rather than a customer and partner in your success?
As it happens, I did encounter a problem with my new iPhone: 18 hours after I set up my phone, my phone number had not transferred from my old phone on a different carrier. The industry standard is that mobile numbers should be transferred within three hours, so I knew there was something wrong.
This morning I followed my usual routine when I have to call tech support: I cleared a block of time from my calendar, loaded today's newspaper in my web browser, and sat at my desk with the speakerphone prepared to wait for the next available agent. Imagine my surprise when my call was transferred directly to a customer service representative, with only the briefest stop for a "this call may be recorded" message. No menus, no demands that I enter my account number, no attempts to sidetrack me into an irrelevant self-service option. I didn't even have time to scan the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
The representative was polite, efficient, and had my phone working within five minutes. She even called me on my iPhone to verify that I could now receive calls.
I was impressed. Suspicious, I asked the agent about the service I was getting, and she told me that iPhone customers get their own customer service phone number, which goes straight to a group of specially-trained agents. Perhaps I would have had to wait longer if I'd called over the weekend during the crush of initial sales, but by this morning I could get the premium level of service appropriate for a customer who just bought an expensive new phone and committed to two years of service.
I don't know how you convinced a large mobile phone company to take such a customer-friendly approach, but it happened.
I think that you understand the key principle of customer service which most companies have a hard time grasping: Customer service is just as much a part of the product as the battery, display, and buttons. Premium service, like premium design, commands a premium price.
My iPhone is not perfect, but I am impressed with the product and the experience so far. Thank you, Mr. Jobs, for finally bringing a mobile phone company to treat me as a customer and not a nuisance.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Ultimate Customer Service
Tue - June 12, 2007 09:11 AM
I think I've found the formula for Ultimate Customer Service: a money-losing monopoly receiving huge federal subsidies.
The monopoly in question is Amtrak. For our summer vacation this year, we're taking the family on Amtrak's Empire Builder train to Seattle, sleeper car and all. The kids are excited, and honestly, Dad is too.
Yesterday I took my older son with me to the train station to pick up our tickets and figure out some of the logistics of the trip. After all, it's been probably 20 years since I've taken the train from Minneapolis, and I needed to know where the station is, where to park, how early to arrive, and so forth.
With all the cutbacks in Amtrak service over the past decades, the Twin Cities train station plays host to a grand total of two trains a day: one going East, the other going West. The Eastbound train arrives around 7 AM, and the Westbound train departs around 11 PM.
So the train station--a fairly large building reminiscent of a small airport terminal from the days before security checkpoints--is open for over 18 hours a day, for the sake of two trains.
When we visited (mid-afternoon), the station was completely deserted, with the exception of the three people manning the ticket counter.
Needless to say, my son and I got outstandingcustomer service, with three bored train enthusiasts glad to have someone to talk to (I think it's a law that you have to be a train enthusiast to work for Amtrak). They took all the time we wanted to ask questions, looked up information, and helped any way we wanted.
It was all a little overwhelming.
Sadly, this display of service is part of the reason whyAmtrak struggles to stay solvent: even as the number of passengers has dropped, they're still paying for a level of infrastructure more appropriate for the kind of business they did in the 1970's. The three people on duty could have easily handled ten trains a day, maybe even double that with the aid of a few self-service kiosks.
On the other hand, if you're sick of the hassles of air travel, and you want to take a different sort of vacation where you get customer service, room to move, and no humiliating security searches, Amtrak is the way to go (at least as long as Congress keeps paying for it). Just think of it as a cruise ship on land.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Yesterday I took my older son with me to the train station to pick up our tickets and figure out some of the logistics of the trip. After all, it's been probably 20 years since I've taken the train from Minneapolis, and I needed to know where the station is, where to park, how early to arrive, and so forth.
With all the cutbacks in Amtrak service over the past decades, the Twin Cities train station plays host to a grand total of two trains a day: one going East, the other going West. The Eastbound train arrives around 7 AM, and the Westbound train departs around 11 PM.
So the train station--a fairly large building reminiscent of a small airport terminal from the days before security checkpoints--is open for over 18 hours a day, for the sake of two trains.
When we visited (mid-afternoon), the station was completely deserted, with the exception of the three people manning the ticket counter.
Needless to say, my son and I got outstandingcustomer service, with three bored train enthusiasts glad to have someone to talk to (I think it's a law that you have to be a train enthusiast to work for Amtrak). They took all the time we wanted to ask questions, looked up information, and helped any way we wanted.
It was all a little overwhelming.
Sadly, this display of service is part of the reason whyAmtrak struggles to stay solvent: even as the number of passengers has dropped, they're still paying for a level of infrastructure more appropriate for the kind of business they did in the 1970's. The three people on duty could have easily handled ten trains a day, maybe even double that with the aid of a few self-service kiosks.
On the other hand, if you're sick of the hassles of air travel, and you want to take a different sort of vacation where you get customer service, room to move, and no humiliating security searches, Amtrak is the way to go (at least as long as Congress keeps paying for it). Just think of it as a cruise ship on land.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Fancy Hotel
Mon - May 21, 2007 02:22 PM
This weekend, my wife and I had the unusual treat of the grandparents watching our kids overnight. It's been at least a couple years since we've had that kind of a break, so we wanted to make the most of it. I went to Travelocity and booked a suite at The St. Paul Hotel, once of the fanciest places in the twin cities and the place where Presidents and Prime Ministers stay when they come to visit. I didn't go totally overboard and book the Penthouse Suite, but I did splurge a little and reserve a room a notch above the standard.
When we checked in, however, we were given a considerably smaller room than the one we booked. Fortunately, I had printed out the confirmation page from Travelocity, and showed it to the check-in clerk.
She just sort of shrugged and offered that sometimes "the systems just don't integrate properly."
Could we get the room that we'd booked? No going, since all the fancy suited were booked for that evening--mostly with prom-goers we guessed, judging from all the teenagers in fancy clothes hanging around.
One of the things you expect when you stay in a super-fancy hotel is that they'll take care of everythingfor you. Part of that is the expectation that if something goes wrong--such as a mistake in your reservation--the hotel will go beyond the call of duty to make it right.
So the indifferent response I got to this booking error ("I'm sorry for the error, but at least it's a less expensive room!") really surprised me.
Don't mistake me: the room we stayed in was quite nice, and we had no complaints about our stay. It just wasn't as special as I'd hoped for our rare night off.
The story continues, though: the next morning, we got up, had a relaxed breakfast at the hotel's sunday brunch, and checked out mere seconds before the check-out time.
"How was your stay?" the manager asked us as we settled the bill. I explained that it was very nice, except for the mistake in our reservation. "I heard about that," she said, "did anyone do anything to make up for the mistake?"
When I said that nobody had, she proceeded to take both the valet parking and breakfast off our bill, apologizing profusely the whole time. "And," she said, attaching her business card to our statement, "if you come back--and I hope you do--give me a call and we'll do something for you."
Now that was the kind of service I expect from a fancy hotel.
Posted by Peter Leppik
She just sort of shrugged and offered that sometimes "the systems just don't integrate properly."
Could we get the room that we'd booked? No going, since all the fancy suited were booked for that evening--mostly with prom-goers we guessed, judging from all the teenagers in fancy clothes hanging around.
One of the things you expect when you stay in a super-fancy hotel is that they'll take care of everythingfor you. Part of that is the expectation that if something goes wrong--such as a mistake in your reservation--the hotel will go beyond the call of duty to make it right.
So the indifferent response I got to this booking error ("I'm sorry for the error, but at least it's a less expensive room!") really surprised me.
Don't mistake me: the room we stayed in was quite nice, and we had no complaints about our stay. It just wasn't as special as I'd hoped for our rare night off.
The story continues, though: the next morning, we got up, had a relaxed breakfast at the hotel's sunday brunch, and checked out mere seconds before the check-out time.
"How was your stay?" the manager asked us as we settled the bill. I explained that it was very nice, except for the mistake in our reservation. "I heard about that," she said, "did anyone do anything to make up for the mistake?"
When I said that nobody had, she proceeded to take both the valet parking and breakfast off our bill, apologizing profusely the whole time. "And," she said, attaching her business card to our statement, "if you come back--and I hope you do--give me a call and we'll do something for you."
Now that was the kind of service I expect from a fancy hotel.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Unexpected Service
Tue - January 30, 2007 02:31 PM
The past couple of weeks, my wife and I moved our oldest son to a different school.
Minnesota has an "open enrollment" system, where any Minnesota resident can attend any Minnesota public school free of charge. The state education funding follows the student, meaning that schools get more money from the state if they can attract more students.
Thanks, I believe, to the element of competition this introduces into the system, I couldn't believe the level of service we got from the different schools we looked at. We could be excused for forgetting that we were dealing with government entities.
Every school was remarkably responsive, and we were able to schedule tours at our convenience and on very short notice. We were also subject to a level of flattery not often seen outside a high-end clothing store ("I can see already that you have a very bright son"). When it came time to enroll, instead of the expected blizzard of paperwork, we had just a couple pages of forms to fill out. The school was even willing to let our son start immediately, before the paperwork worked its way through the system.
Compare this to the experience my wife had a number of years ago, when she tried to switch schools in the very early days of the open enrollment system. Back then, it was still a shock to public school administrators that students could actually, you know, go somewhere else, and they didn't quite know how to deal with it. My wife, then a high-schooler, was forced to sit through a meeting with her principal, alternating between pleading ("This is going to cost us a lot of money!"), scare tactics ("You really don't know what you're getting yourself into"), and faux-patriotism ("You're letting you school down"). In the end, the net effect was to convince her to leave that much faster.
The old saying is that you attract more flies with honey than vinegar, and it seems that competition eventually forced schools to figure out that they had to start treating parents and students like valued customers rather than poor souls stuck at the DMV.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Thanks, I believe, to the element of competition this introduces into the system, I couldn't believe the level of service we got from the different schools we looked at. We could be excused for forgetting that we were dealing with government entities.
Every school was remarkably responsive, and we were able to schedule tours at our convenience and on very short notice. We were also subject to a level of flattery not often seen outside a high-end clothing store ("I can see already that you have a very bright son"). When it came time to enroll, instead of the expected blizzard of paperwork, we had just a couple pages of forms to fill out. The school was even willing to let our son start immediately, before the paperwork worked its way through the system.
Compare this to the experience my wife had a number of years ago, when she tried to switch schools in the very early days of the open enrollment system. Back then, it was still a shock to public school administrators that students could actually, you know, go somewhere else, and they didn't quite know how to deal with it. My wife, then a high-schooler, was forced to sit through a meeting with her principal, alternating between pleading ("This is going to cost us a lot of money!"), scare tactics ("You really don't know what you're getting yourself into"), and faux-patriotism ("You're letting you school down"). In the end, the net effect was to convince her to leave that much faster.
The old saying is that you attract more flies with honey than vinegar, and it seems that competition eventually forced schools to figure out that they had to start treating parents and students like valued customers rather than poor souls stuck at the DMV.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Well Duh!
Thu - July 20, 2006 02:53 PM
Over the last weeks, I have commented several times on the difficulty that banks in particular have in delivering top shelf customer service. The gist of my observation is that as bank customers we demand high service levels but don't want to pay for it, and so the banks get caught in a squeeze, trying to do more with less.
While our focus here at VocaLabs is measuring the quality of phone based customer care, that is only one piece of the overall customer experience. Here's an article Peter found this AM on what one Swiss Bank is doing to better understand how customers form the opinions they do.
Part of me is happy to see that at least one company seems to be getting the message, and another part of me isn't surprised that the Swiss seem so far behind the curve. 40 years ago, my Dad was trying to explain the impact of poor service to me and he characterized the attitude demonstrated in the article as: "Ve Vill make it. Und you vill buy it." So part of me is saddened that four decades later, that attitude is still so common.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Part of me is happy to see that at least one company seems to be getting the message, and another part of me isn't surprised that the Swiss seem so far behind the curve. 40 years ago, my Dad was trying to explain the impact of poor service to me and he characterized the attitude demonstrated in the article as: "Ve Vill make it. Und you vill buy it." So part of me is saddened that four decades later, that attitude is still so common.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Selling the Special Touch
Tue - July 18, 2006 01:47 PM
Peter shared an article with me from this morning's Wall St. Journal that tells the story of certain companies such as auto dealers adopting some of the high-touch satisfaction services offered by top hotels such as the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton. Simple touches such as the Lexus dealer leaving a bottle of water and some Hershey's Kisses in the cup holder when a customer picks up their car after a service call, and one dealer reports that sales are up 20% and customer retention for vehicle service at least 10%.
No sooner had I read the article than I was having a discussion with a VocaLabs sales agent about a name brand prospect for our services so large that it operates 70 regional call centers and has an entire group of personnel dedicated to customer retention. The subject was how to convince front line personnel of the importance of good service, and the struggle this dedicated group was having to improve loyalty and save customers from defecting to the competition. Having nothing to do with auto service, I nevertheless suggested the Hershey's Kisses idea along with a note saying business is appreciated. The idea is going up the corporate chain as I write this, and it will be most interesting if the company implements this idea, to see how overall satisfaction is affected.
Really, paying attention to detail and such a simple gesture as a nickel's worth of chocolate really can separate an outstanding company from the crowd.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Really, paying attention to detail and such a simple gesture as a nickel's worth of chocolate really can separate an outstanding company from the crowd.
Posted by Rick Rappe
How much does customer loyalty cost?
Thu - February 23, 2006 01:55 PM
How much does it cost to make a customer an enthusiastic promoter of your company?
Here's one customer's answer: six bucks.
A $6 discount delivered at exactly the right moment to a customer who had been paying $80/month for years was enough to turn one mildly indifferent customer into an evangelist. When the customer forgot his gym shorts one morning, the cashier made the decision to offer him a $6 discount on a pair of new ones rather than charge full price.
The magic isn't the money, but the fact that someone at the company recognized that the customer was desperate and spontaneously offered to help, rather than taking advantage of the situation.
Posted by Peter Leppik
A $6 discount delivered at exactly the right moment to a customer who had been paying $80/month for years was enough to turn one mildly indifferent customer into an evangelist. When the customer forgot his gym shorts one morning, the cashier made the decision to offer him a $6 discount on a pair of new ones rather than charge full price.
The magic isn't the money, but the fact that someone at the company recognized that the customer was desperate and spontaneously offered to help, rather than taking advantage of the situation.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Ultimate Customer Service
Tue - February 14, 2006 05:03 PM
Here's a random thought about Ultimate Customer Service. We know that most of the time spent in an IVR or speech recognition system is spent on task recognition, not task completion. In English, that means that when you call a customer service number and interact with an automated system, most of the time spent in automation is just the computer trying to figure out what you want to do. Once your task has been identified, actually completing it (or routing the call to a human) is usually easy.
Recognizing this fact, some speech recognition vendors are promoting natural language call steering systems. These systems ask the caller to state what she wants to do, then use sophisticated software to try to categorize that request and route it. But such systems are expensive and take a lot of effort and tuning to get good performance out of them.
It turns our that humans are very good at figuring out what task someone wants to do when presented with a natural language response. So why not turn the model on its head: instead of using an automated system to direct the call to the right person or self-service application, use a person. Yes it would be more expensive than using an automated system, but probably not as expensive as you'd think, since most calls the "call director" would handle could be done in just a few seconds:
Thank you for calling ACME. How may I direct your call?
I need to check my account balance.
One moment, I'll connect you to our self-service account information line.
or:
Thank you for calling ACME. How may I direct your call?
Uh, I need to talk to someone about a problem on my bill.
I'll connect you to a billing resolution specialist.
(Astute readers will notice that there's a special name for this particular type of call center agent: "Receptionist.") The result: customers get the human touch immediatelywith every call, they spend less time on the phone, and with human intelligence behind call routing, misdirected calls can be significantly reduced. In some cases, the reduction in misdirected calls might even be enough to pay for the extra agent time. If cost is still an issue, the call center can prerecord both the greeting and the most common "I'll connect you to..." messages. The agent just has to listen to the customer then click one button to dispatch the call.
As an added bonus, when an upset customer calls, the agent can immediately take control and help resolve the problem, rather than letting the customer stew through a made of automated options.
Posted by Peter Leppik
It turns our that humans are very good at figuring out what task someone wants to do when presented with a natural language response. So why not turn the model on its head: instead of using an automated system to direct the call to the right person or self-service application, use a person. Yes it would be more expensive than using an automated system, but probably not as expensive as you'd think, since most calls the "call director" would handle could be done in just a few seconds:
Thank you for calling ACME. How may I direct your call?
I need to check my account balance.
One moment, I'll connect you to our self-service account information line.
or:
Thank you for calling ACME. How may I direct your call?
Uh, I need to talk to someone about a problem on my bill.
I'll connect you to a billing resolution specialist.
(Astute readers will notice that there's a special name for this particular type of call center agent: "Receptionist.") The result: customers get the human touch immediatelywith every call, they spend less time on the phone, and with human intelligence behind call routing, misdirected calls can be significantly reduced. In some cases, the reduction in misdirected calls might even be enough to pay for the extra agent time. If cost is still an issue, the call center can prerecord both the greeting and the most common "I'll connect you to..." messages. The agent just has to listen to the customer then click one button to dispatch the call.
As an added bonus, when an upset customer calls, the agent can immediately take control and help resolve the problem, rather than letting the customer stew through a made of automated options.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Another kind of customer service experience
Fri - November 18, 2005 09:31 AM
My wife needed a Nerf gun to take to work. Don't ask.
So last night I found myself in a local Toys 'R' Us. I would have thought it was Retailing 101 to make it easy to find things in a big store, but apparently Toys 'R' Us management thinks otherwise. So after a few minutes of fruitless wandering the aisles, I spotted an employee.
"Excuse me, can you tell me where to find Nerf guns?"
The man's eyes lit up. "Oh yeah, I know where the Nerf guns are. I've got a whole collection at home."
"A regular Nerf arsenal, eh?"
"Every Nerf gun ever made. I even have the Nerf bazooka."
He led me to the aisle with about a dozen different models of Nerf armaments, ranging from a Nerf crossbow to the giant combination Nerf rocket launcher with two detachable Nerf machine guns. He clearly couldn't wait to share his depth of knowledge and experience in all things that fling Nerf.
"This one is a good basic set. It has six Nerf darts which glow in the dark. Or this model has a laser sight, with a laser pointer built into the gun. This one can shoot either a barrage of darts, or a big Nerf grenade. Is this a gift for someone?"
"Actually, it's for my wife," I said. "She needs to take it into work."
His eyes lit up with something approaching awe: as though I had told him that Shangri-La is real and located in the Western suburbs of Minneapolis. "Wow, what kind of place does your wife work?"
"It's a software company. They have programmers who like too blow off steam."
"Here, this model is pretty cool. It's based on a German-designed machine gun..."
In the end I chose one of the simpler models, but I felt that I had made a truly informed choice, and I came out knowing far more about Nerf weaponry than I ever expected or wanted to. The employee who helped me was one of those rare gems in today's big box retail world: a true enthusiast. Odds are, he took the job at Toys 'R' Us at least in part to feed his Nerf habit, and doesn't get a whole lot of recognition for his unique knowledge base. Frankly, it's hard to see how the company could really make use of such a narrow specialty.
But it certainly made this trip unexpectedly interesting for me.
Posted by Peter Leppik
"Excuse me, can you tell me where to find Nerf guns?"
The man's eyes lit up. "Oh yeah, I know where the Nerf guns are. I've got a whole collection at home."
"A regular Nerf arsenal, eh?"
"Every Nerf gun ever made. I even have the Nerf bazooka."
He led me to the aisle with about a dozen different models of Nerf armaments, ranging from a Nerf crossbow to the giant combination Nerf rocket launcher with two detachable Nerf machine guns. He clearly couldn't wait to share his depth of knowledge and experience in all things that fling Nerf.
"This one is a good basic set. It has six Nerf darts which glow in the dark. Or this model has a laser sight, with a laser pointer built into the gun. This one can shoot either a barrage of darts, or a big Nerf grenade. Is this a gift for someone?"
"Actually, it's for my wife," I said. "She needs to take it into work."
His eyes lit up with something approaching awe: as though I had told him that Shangri-La is real and located in the Western suburbs of Minneapolis. "Wow, what kind of place does your wife work?"
"It's a software company. They have programmers who like too blow off steam."
"Here, this model is pretty cool. It's based on a German-designed machine gun..."
In the end I chose one of the simpler models, but I felt that I had made a truly informed choice, and I came out knowing far more about Nerf weaponry than I ever expected or wanted to. The employee who helped me was one of those rare gems in today's big box retail world: a true enthusiast. Odds are, he took the job at Toys 'R' Us at least in part to feed his Nerf habit, and doesn't get a whole lot of recognition for his unique knowledge base. Frankly, it's hard to see how the company could really make use of such a narrow specialty.
But it certainly made this trip unexpectedly interesting for me.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Letting Customers Decide
Thu - October 13, 2005 01:51 PM
A couple months ago we released some data about the effect of forcing customers to use an automated system instead of giving them the option to talk to a live person. Our conclusion was no surprise to those in the customer service business: making it hard for customers to talk to a live person leads to low caller satisfaction, multiple calls for the same problem, and yet doesn't improve the automation rate much.
Yet the practice of blocking customers from reaching human assistance continues at many companies. I believe most of these are driven by mistaken efforts to save money by increasing automation, without realizing that (a) it doesn't really increase automation much, and (b) the costs are far greater than the benefits. But it can be hard when senior management says, "save money or else," and doesn't provide the budget to do things right.
But what about the opposite approach? Can an company dramatically improve customer satisfaction at minimal cost simply by giving callers the option to speak to an agent at the beginning of a call?
Instinctively, I think the answer is "yes," though actual data points are hard to find.
Imagine how customers will react if the first thing they hear when they call is something like this:
"Thank you for calling XYZ company. If you are calling about a routine issue such as checking your account balance, order status, or to find the location of a retail store, you can press '1' now for our menu of self-service options. Otherwise, please wait, and someone will help you within 30 seconds."
Whoa, what's that you say! Make live agents the default, with self-service as an option! "It'll never work," I can hear finance executives muttering already, "nobody will choose self-service, and our call center costs will go through the roof!"
But that thinking is demonstrably wrong. That assumes that customers always prefer to talk to a human instead of using self-service, but our research has consistently shown the opposite.
In fact, this point is so important that I'm going to put it in bold-face italics: When presented with a well-designed self-service option, most callers prefer self-service over a live person. Our research has shown this time and time again.
The key, however, is providing a good enough self-service option. Most systems, frankly, don't measure up. Not because designing a good self-service system is rocket science, but because many companies just don't pay any attention to the human factors.
We believe that most callers know--before they dial the phone--if they need to talk to an agent or not. Need to check your balance? Most people will happily use self-service. Mistake on your bill? There's no way a computer's going to help you, and you'll do whatever it takes to get a human on the line.
In fact, having to talk to a stranger for a simple task can be a burden. All you want is your account balance, but you might have to make small talk, or have to wait in line, or wind up with someone slow and incompetent. But self-service gets you off the phone right away.
Still don't believe me? Answer these questions about your own behavior:
(a) Where do you go when you need cash? To a branch of your bank, or to an ATM?
(b) When filling your car at a station which offers "pay-at-the-pump," do you pay at the pump or go inside?
(c) If you just need to leave someone a brief message (i.e. "Thursday for lunch works for me, I'll be there.") do you prefer to talk to the person on the phone, or just leave a voicemail or send an e-mail?
If you're like most people, you probably bank at an ATM, pay at the pump, and send a short message, as long as you're offered the option. So why should customer service be any different?
Unfortunately, it takes a huge leap of faith to go from thinking of "containing" customers in the automated system to thinking about "steering" them to it, or even "seducing" customers with the additional convenience. It is a completely different view of customer service automation, and one which runs completely counter to the way people have thought about IVR systems for 20 years.
The only major company I can think of which comes close to trying this is Southwest Airlines, which has essentially no IVR at all: every caller talks to a live human. I suspect that it is no coincidence that Southwest consistently has among the highest caller satisfaction scores we measure, but they're also spending a lot more on customer service than they have to. Surely callers with routine inquiries (like flight times) can be offered a self-service option.
So who will be the first company to take the leap of faith and give customers the choice of self-service or live agent?
Posted by Peter Leppik
But what about the opposite approach? Can an company dramatically improve customer satisfaction at minimal cost simply by giving callers the option to speak to an agent at the beginning of a call?
Instinctively, I think the answer is "yes," though actual data points are hard to find.
Imagine how customers will react if the first thing they hear when they call is something like this:
"Thank you for calling XYZ company. If you are calling about a routine issue such as checking your account balance, order status, or to find the location of a retail store, you can press '1' now for our menu of self-service options. Otherwise, please wait, and someone will help you within 30 seconds."
Whoa, what's that you say! Make live agents the default, with self-service as an option! "It'll never work," I can hear finance executives muttering already, "nobody will choose self-service, and our call center costs will go through the roof!"
But that thinking is demonstrably wrong. That assumes that customers always prefer to talk to a human instead of using self-service, but our research has consistently shown the opposite.
In fact, this point is so important that I'm going to put it in bold-face italics: When presented with a well-designed self-service option, most callers prefer self-service over a live person. Our research has shown this time and time again.
The key, however, is providing a good enough self-service option. Most systems, frankly, don't measure up. Not because designing a good self-service system is rocket science, but because many companies just don't pay any attention to the human factors.
We believe that most callers know--before they dial the phone--if they need to talk to an agent or not. Need to check your balance? Most people will happily use self-service. Mistake on your bill? There's no way a computer's going to help you, and you'll do whatever it takes to get a human on the line.
In fact, having to talk to a stranger for a simple task can be a burden. All you want is your account balance, but you might have to make small talk, or have to wait in line, or wind up with someone slow and incompetent. But self-service gets you off the phone right away.
Still don't believe me? Answer these questions about your own behavior:
(a) Where do you go when you need cash? To a branch of your bank, or to an ATM?
(b) When filling your car at a station which offers "pay-at-the-pump," do you pay at the pump or go inside?
(c) If you just need to leave someone a brief message (i.e. "Thursday for lunch works for me, I'll be there.") do you prefer to talk to the person on the phone, or just leave a voicemail or send an e-mail?
If you're like most people, you probably bank at an ATM, pay at the pump, and send a short message, as long as you're offered the option. So why should customer service be any different?
Unfortunately, it takes a huge leap of faith to go from thinking of "containing" customers in the automated system to thinking about "steering" them to it, or even "seducing" customers with the additional convenience. It is a completely different view of customer service automation, and one which runs completely counter to the way people have thought about IVR systems for 20 years.
The only major company I can think of which comes close to trying this is Southwest Airlines, which has essentially no IVR at all: every caller talks to a live human. I suspect that it is no coincidence that Southwest consistently has among the highest caller satisfaction scores we measure, but they're also spending a lot more on customer service than they have to. Surely callers with routine inquiries (like flight times) can be offered a self-service option.
So who will be the first company to take the leap of faith and give customers the choice of self-service or live agent?
Posted by Peter Leppik
Phoning Home
Thu - September 22, 2005 10:39 AM
Northwest Airlines is the airline I love to hate. Living in the Minneapolis area, you are pretty much forced to fly Northwest if you want to get anywhere fast: the company controls something like 80% of the flights in and out of our fair city. But changes in the airline industry (among other forces) have lead to a long, slow decline in the level of service I have come to expect from the company. Right now the company is laboring under simultaneous bankruptcy and labor woes, though the planes are still in the air.
Last night I was flying home on Northwest from the ACCE conference when my flight was diverted to Sioux Falls, SD, due to nasty thunderstorms in the Twin Cities. There's nothing the airline or anyone else can do about this sort of event (at least I didn't wind up with a tree in my driveway, like one VocaLabs employee), and we'd already spent a half-hour in a holding pattern. As the old pilots' saying goes, "It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground."
So we landed a couple hundred miles from our destination, and the captain shut down the engines. Since this was to be a short refueling stop, we didn't taxi to a gate or open any doors (except for the forward galley door so the captain could sign the fuel slip), but we were allowed to stand up, move around the cabin, and use our cellphones.
"And," the lead flight attendant continued over the P.A., "if you need to call home and don't have a cellphone, come up front and you can borrow mine."
The flight attendants were at the end of an already longer-than-expected day, working for an airline which just declared bankruptcy last week. Earlier that same day, Northwest announced that 1,400 flight attendants would lose their jobs by the end of the year. Nobody would have been the slightest bit surprised if she had chosen to be grumpy. In fact, many of us have come to expect it.
But this one gesture made a surprisingly big difference. Instead of treating us like cattle (as we've come to expect), she showed that she cared about our problems as one human being to another. It also showed that she was on our side, not just another cog in the corporate machine to move us on and off airplanes as efficiently as possible (liberating as much of our money along the way as it can).
In the cabin, there was none of the usual grumbling that a two-hour diversion and delay would normally cause. Instead, comments were more along the lines of "Did you hear what the weather's like in Minneapolis? I'm sure glad we didn't fly into that."
When we finally landed in Minneapolis well after midnight, the captain came on the P.A. one last time to thank us all for flying Northwest. "I also want to thank you especially for the extraordinary patience and understanding you've shown with our delay this evening."
But the person he really should have thanked was the lead flight attendant, who went above and beyond the call of duty to make us feel like she cared.
Posted by Peter Leppik
So we landed a couple hundred miles from our destination, and the captain shut down the engines. Since this was to be a short refueling stop, we didn't taxi to a gate or open any doors (except for the forward galley door so the captain could sign the fuel slip), but we were allowed to stand up, move around the cabin, and use our cellphones.
"And," the lead flight attendant continued over the P.A., "if you need to call home and don't have a cellphone, come up front and you can borrow mine."
The flight attendants were at the end of an already longer-than-expected day, working for an airline which just declared bankruptcy last week. Earlier that same day, Northwest announced that 1,400 flight attendants would lose their jobs by the end of the year. Nobody would have been the slightest bit surprised if she had chosen to be grumpy. In fact, many of us have come to expect it.
But this one gesture made a surprisingly big difference. Instead of treating us like cattle (as we've come to expect), she showed that she cared about our problems as one human being to another. It also showed that she was on our side, not just another cog in the corporate machine to move us on and off airplanes as efficiently as possible (liberating as much of our money along the way as it can).
In the cabin, there was none of the usual grumbling that a two-hour diversion and delay would normally cause. Instead, comments were more along the lines of "Did you hear what the weather's like in Minneapolis? I'm sure glad we didn't fly into that."
When we finally landed in Minneapolis well after midnight, the captain came on the P.A. one last time to thank us all for flying Northwest. "I also want to thank you especially for the extraordinary patience and understanding you've shown with our delay this evening."
But the person he really should have thanked was the lead flight attendant, who went above and beyond the call of duty to make us feel like she cared.
Posted by Peter Leppik