The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
A Historic Moment
Wednesday - November 05, 2008 02:00 PM
I've made a conscious effort to keep politics out of this blog, even though (as readers of my personal blog know) I've been supporting Obama for President since late 2007.
Yesterday's election was, I believe, one of the few truly historic moments I will see in my lifetime, on par with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the 9/11 attacks. When Barack Obama was born, there were places in this country where he would have been treated as a distinctly second-class citizen, and where he could have exercised his right to vote only with considerable difficulty and personal risk.
Today he is our President-Elect.
As a result, millions of Americans can now honestly answer "Yes" when their children ask, "Is it true that anyone can become president?"
Just as important, Obama achieved his victory by appealing to the best in people, with a message of hope, inspiration, and competence at time of enormous national challenges. I don't think he will achieve everything his supporters hope he will, but just the simple fact of his election sends a powerful message of who we are as a country.
We are, in short, a country which has its faults but struggles to overcome them. We are a country which, in our most difficult hours, turns to humanity's highest ideals.
For me, the past few years have been difficult to watch, as I saw our elected representatives abandon many of the principles our country was founded on in a shortsighted and misguided effort to increase our security and preserve their own power.
I always believed, however, that this excursion was temporary. One of the most ingenious aspects of our system of government is the way it corrects excesses and abuses, even if that process is sometimes agonizingly slow. Obama will not fix all our problems, but his election is a repudiation of the way this country has been governed for the past several years.
I can think of no better way to sum up than this quote from Obama's speech last night:
And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.
Posted at 02:00 PM | Permalink |
Don't Vote the Issues
Tuesday - November 04, 2008 12:36 PM
It's election day, and about time. Tomorrow we can all go back to work and stop obsessing about politics.
My mother used to be a state legislator (for twelve years), and what I learned about the legislative process from her has convinced me that most issue-oriented voters make their decisions the wrong way.
The usual process many voters and nearly all special-interest groups go through is to compile a checklist of issues, compare the candidates' positions on those issues, and choose the candidate whose issues best match the voter's (or interest group's).
Most elected officials, however, don't have the ability to make any sort of mark on more than one or two issues. It takes a lot of time, energy, and political effort to pass any substantive legislation, so in order to be effective anywhere, a legislator has to focus on just the issue most important to him or her.
Issues less important to a given politician won't get much attention; and some legislators may act against their position on a less-important issue in order to gain ground on something more important (this is called "compromise," and without it nothing happens in government).
So in terms of whether a given politician is going to have any effect on a given issue, it's more important to know what the one or two most important issues are for that politician than how he stands on a lengthy checklist of issues.
To put this in concrete terms, let's suppose that I care about three issues in this election: I oppose lemur control, I favor stop-sign reduction, and I favor kimchi import controls. I consider all these issues about equally important to me.
Bob and Jane are running for congress in my district. Bob opposes lemur control, favors stop-sign reduction, and opposes kimchi import controls; Bob's most important issue is kimchi import controls.
Jane, on the other hand, opposes lemur control, opposes stop-sign reduction, and opposes kimchi import controls; Jane's most important issue is lemur control.
Just counting the issues, I should vote for Bob since he agrees with me on two of the three issues. However, the one he disagrees with me about is also his most important issue and the one he's likely to actually spend time and attention working towards.
So in reality, I should vote for Jane even though she disagrees with me on two of the three issues, because the issue where we agree is also her most important issue and one she's likely to promote in congress.
When you decide who to vote for, don't look at the laundry list of issues--instead, focus on the one or two issues each candidate feels is most important. Once you've gotten past those couple of issues, matters of character, leadership style, partisanship, etc. are going to tell you a lot more about how that person will behave in office than the stated positions on all the minor issues.
Posted at 12:36 PM | Permalink |
Snow!
Thursday - October 23, 2008 11:52 AM
The weather forecast for this coming Sunday has a new feature: snow.
One of the great things about living in Minnesota is the parade of seasons. You never get bored of the weather, since there's always something new. One of the not-so-great things, of course, is cold weather, shoveling driveways, and driving on slippery road.
You take the good with the bad. Kids have a different perspective: to them, it's all good.
My oldest was positively giddy at the prospect of the first snowfall of the season. I have to admit to a certain excitement, too: snow covers up all the stuff I didn't get around to doing in the garden, and it doesn't need to be mowed every week.
This snow (if it even arrives) is likely to be just a few flakes which melt as soon as they hit the ground--though I understand that in Nebraska they're getting ten inches.
I know this won't make me popular among a lot of Minnesotans, but I always hope for an extra-snowy winter. As I figure, if you're going to live in a place with winter, you might as well go whole hog.
Posted at 11:52 AM | Permalink |
Massive Investment Fraud
Thursday - October 02, 2008 01:12 PM
At the same time Wall Street is playing out a slow-motion train wreck, we're watching our own old-fashioned investment fraud play out here in the Twin Cities.
Just down the street from my home is the gleaming new headquarters building of The Petters Group. Petters Group, run until a few days ago by Tom Petters, has grown to local prominence over the past decade by buying troubled companies out of bankruptcy and turning them around. Petters is the parent company of Fingerhut, Polaroid, and Sun Country Airlines, among others.
Petters himself has made a name for himself as a local business hero and philanthropist, generously supporting a number of local charities and funding a foundation named for his son (who died while studying abroad).
The problem is that this whole edifice turns out to be a fraud. Last week the feds raided the Petters Group headquarters, sending all employees home for the day, and searched Tom Petters' home. According to newspaper articles, the government alleges that Petters Group raised money from investors by forging purchase orders and claiming nonexistent inventory in order to make its finances look better than they were.
This has apparently been going on for years, since before Petters Group's first high-profile acquisition, and amounts to something like $2 billion. That's approaching Enron-scale fraud, and would undoubtably be national news were it not for the election and banking crisis which happen to be going on now.
A lot of questions are still unanswered: top of my mind is how Petters Group was able to convince so many (presumably sophisticated) investors to invest so much money without ever being audited. At least I assume they were never audited, since none of the media reports mention any auditors, and fake inventory and fake orders are covered in Accounting Fraud 101. A five-minute phone call to one of the supposed buyers of that fake inventory would have exposed the scheme any time in the past decade.
All this would be interesting gossip were it not for the thousands of employees of the very real companies Petters Group had acquired and was propping up. Sun Country Airlines is cutting paychecks by 50% across the board in an effort to conserve cash. I don't know the state or fate of any of the other Petters companies, but it's a safe bet that they will have to survive on their own for the time being. Some won't make it.
So best wishes to anyone stuck in that mess. With any luck the criminals will go to jail, consistent with all due process, but that's cold comfort to Fingerhut or Sun Country employees wondering how they're going to make it through Christmas.
Posted at 01:12 PM | Permalink |
Gustav
Tuesday - September 02, 2008 02:05 PM
One of our clients, Cellular South, is based in Jackson, MS, and was impacted by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.
So it was with some trepidation I watched the news over my vacation last week and over the weekend, as Gustav churned towards the Gulf Coast in a pattern all too reminiscent of Katrina.
Fortunately, it looks like the damage this time around was not nearly as bad, and the cleanup will be considerably simpler.
In that part of the country, hurricanes are a fact of life much as snowstorms are part of living in Minnesota. Katrina wasn't the first, and Gustav won't be the last. Nevertheless, all of us at VocaLabs are breathing a little easier this morning.
Posted at 02:05 PM | Permalink |
Health Savings Accounts
Tuesday - January 08, 2008 04:13 PM
The financial aspects are fairly well defined, even if we don't have all the answers yet: how much will it cost per person, how comparable is the coverage, what's the out-of-pocket expense, etc. On an aggregate basis (combining all employees and families, and looking at both the employee and employer contributions), it looks like we come out a couple thousand dollars ahead if we make the switch.
So the decision may come down to the nonfinancial aspects: what's the paperwork like, how do we file claims, what kinds of records do we need to keep, and so forth.
It's interesting that, like in so many other things, it probably won't come down to price in the end (that's my sneaky way of getting customer service into this entry).
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 04:13 PM | Permalink |
War of the Ice Cream Trucks
Thursday - January 03, 2008 02:03 PM
Now that's what I call competitive!
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 02:03 PM | Permalink |
Snow!
Monday - November 05, 2007 01:38 PM
A lot of grown-ups in Minnesota hate winter. It's cold, dark, messy, and every now and then Mother Nature swoops in and drops frozen water on us, disrupting our carefully-planned schedules.
So I was delighted this afternoon to see a passing snow flurry out my office window around lunchtime. It's not heavy enough to stick to the ground at this time of year, so there's no chance of a snow day. Nevertheless, it's a harbinger of white stuff to come, and we've had several disappointingly wimpy winters in a row. It's about time for a seriously snowy season, the kind where you ski to work and dig tunnels from the front door to the mailbox.
The other advantage of a snowy winter, of course, is that it's the Great Equalizer of the Suburbs. It doesn't matter how many weeds are in the yard or how outdated the landscaping when it's all buried under three feet of snow.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 01:38 PM | Permalink |
Company Culture
Thursday - November 01, 2007 02:39 PM
I get to work with a number of different companies trying to sell our services, and every organization has its own process for vendor selection and contracting. The differences are sometimes striking:
At Company B we worked with a key individual who has more authority and influence than her nominal title and job description would suggest. If we can convince Key Individual to kick off a project, all other obstacles melt away.
Company C, like Company A, insists on a comprehensive review and contracting process, but they rely on several "form contracts" for various types of relationships. The first draft of the contract was basically all the relevant forms combined into a single document (which was about 80 pages long!). The remainder of the process was mostly cutting irrelevant parts of the draft, resolving internal contradictions, etc.
Company D gives an unusual level of authority to the manager in the field--whatever his formal authority, it appears he can pretty much do whatever he wants as long as his P&L looks good at the end of the year. Contracting was so informal as to be almost an afterthought.
Company E insisted on formal proposals and a minimum of three vendors competing for every contract above a certain size. Selection criteria were somewhat opaque, but it appears that final selection was based on the personal preference of one or two senior executives.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 02:39 PM | Permalink |
Autumn Reflections
Monday - October 22, 2007 01:53 PM
One of my favorite things about the office building we moved into last winter is that it's on a lake. I don't mean next to a lake or near a lake, but actually built right up to the edge of the water.
When Westwood Lake is high--as it is now, since we've gotten over a foot and a half of rain the past ten weeks--the courtyard between the three buildings becomes part of the marginal wetland around the lake. Two of the buildings are connected by a boardwalk over water (see photo).
Westwood Lake itself is designated a nature area, with the entire lake kept undeveloped with the exception of walking trails and a small interpretive center for school field trips. A two-mile trail around the lake is just a few steps from our office.
Today is one of those perfect fall days: clear and cool (but not yet cold), with the trees at the peak of their color. Minnesotans like to talk a lot about our "quality of life" (especially when outsiders start complaining about the cold), and today I am fortunate to live and work in such a remarkable place.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 01:53 PM | Permalink |
Paging Max Headroom....
Wednesday - September 26, 2007 04:01 PM
We were working with our audio processing software yesterday and produced a result which was simultaneously so striking and wonderful, and yet so useless, that it can only be called Art. So we slapped a bassline on it, and got....this.
(Here's the original audio file, sans music. Feel free to set it to your own funky backbeat.)
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 04:01 PM | Permalink |
Back from the Show Circuit
Monday - September 17, 2007 02:53 PM
ACCE was considerably more exhibitor hostile. Not only was it about 50% more expensive to rent the booth space, but absolutely nothing was included. Renting carpeting and a table added hundreds to the cost, and both the badge scanner and the "Passport to Prizes" program were insanely expensive (we skipped both).
Worse, the organizers did a relatively poor job of drawing conference participants to the exhibit hall. Monday's opening reception had almost no food, and Tuesday--the main day of the event--lacked any significant effort to move people from the conference to the expo. As a result, the show floor was deserted for hours at a time.
In the end, we came home with an acceptable number of new leads from ACCE, but an impressive number from SpeechTEK. There's no question we'll be going back to SpeechTEK. ACCE I'll need to think about.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 02:53 PM | Permalink |
Millions of dollars slip through my fingers!
Monday - August 13, 2007 02:42 PM
Here's the story of how I came into the fortune.
Here's some musing on what it all means.
And here's how it all disappeared.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 02:42 PM | Permalink |
Road Trip!
Wednesday - August 08, 2007 03:48 PM
There's a direct flight from Minneapolis to Des Moines (one of the few advantages of living near a hub airport) which departs at 10:35 AM and arrives at 11:45. I'm not checking any luggage, so let's assume that it takes me 30 minutes to get off the plane and collect a rental car (or taxi), then 30 minutes to navigate an unfamiliar city and get to my meeting. So the meeting will begin at 12:45. To get to on that flight, I ought to plan to be at the gate by 10 AM, which means arriving at the airport no later than 9:30, and leaving home around 9 AM.
If the meeting is two hours long, I will be out the door at 2:45. Allow 30 minutes to get to the airport and turn in the rental car, and another 30 minutes to check in and get to the gate (Des Moines is a small airport), and the earliest flight home I can take would depart at 3:45. Coincidentally, there's a 4:05 departure which gets back to Minneapolis at 5:15. Allow 45 minutes to get off the plane and retrieve my car, and a half hour to drive home, and I arrive at 6:30 PM.
Driving the same trip, I can still leave home at 9 AM, but instead of driving to the airport I head straight to Des Moines. I should arrive at 12:30 PM, and allowing 15 minutes to get lost finding the meeting, I will arrive on time for the 12:45 meeting. Heading home, I depart at 2:45, and get home at 6:15, 15 minutes earlier and $700 richer than I would have been if I'd flown.
This is a best-case scenario, though, since if my meeting was at noon instead of 12:45 I would have to take an 8 AM flight and change planes in Chicago, forcing me to leave home by 6:30 AM (but I won't get home any earlier). Driving to a noon meeting, I can leave at 8 AM and be on time, and get home 45 minutes earlier. If I'm checking luggage, add 30 minutes to each end of the trip. It's easy to envision a scenario where the 7-hour round trip drive to Des Moines is actually 2-3 hours faster than flying.
Given the stress and uncertainty of flying these days, I would give the advantage to driving even when the drive is an hour or two longer than the flight. That's sad, really, considering how much I love airplanes.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 03:48 PM | Permalink |
Tragedy
Thursday - August 02, 2007 09:46 AM
I am thankful right now that--at least by the current reports--the human toll was much less than it could have been. The disaster struck right in the middle of rush hour, and the freeway was jammed with bumper-to-bumper traffic in both directions at the time. While things are still likely to change, I would have expected maybe an order of magnitude more fatalities than the seven being officially reported right now.
Looking ahead, it's going to take years to clean up this mess. Not only did this completely sever one of only two freeway bridges across the Mississippi in downtown Minneapolis (there are other bridges, but they're only connected to city streets), it also cut off river traffic just below Lock and Dam #1, and blocked a major railroad line.
(For those not familiar with the area, the core of downtown Minneapolis is just South and West of the Mississippi. The river sits in a deep gorge with two major freeways crossing at downtown: I-35W carries North-South traffic, and I-94 carries East-West traffic. The main campus of the University of Minnesota straddles the river just East of I-35W, and the entire area is surrounded by historic and cultural districts, student housing, offices, and light industrial areas. I used to live in an apartment only about a block from the collapsed bridge.)
Right now, recovery continues, and we are adjusting to the best of our ability.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 09:46 AM | Permalink |
Blogger Memo
Friday - June 29, 2007 02:02 PM
From: Internet Blogging Senior Management
Subject: Apple iPhone Day
All blogs will be monitored for compliance with this directive. If you have applied for, and received, a variance, you will not be required to write about the iPhone, but to aid our enforcement efforts you are asked to prominently post your Variance Approval Code (VAC) on every page of your weblog for at least the next week.
Unless you have obtained a variance, there are serious consequences for failing to follow this directive. Bloggers who fail to write about the Apple iPhone today are subject to sanctions up to and including substantial cuts in their readership. In the most extreme cases, your blog readership may be eliminated completely.
Thank you for your cooperation. Our goal is to ensure that the entire Internet is 100% dedicated to iPhone coverage, and you are an important part of our success.
Sincerely, The Management
Posted by Peter Leppik
[Author's Note: By posting this memo online, I have fulfilled my obligations.]
Posted at 02:02 PM | Permalink |
Back from vacation
Monday - June 25, 2007 02:38 PM
I will say this, though, about the impact of customer service: we took Amtrak's Empire Builder train for this trip, and where flying is (these days) a painful chore, riding the train was effortless and fun.
It's amazing the difference that makes: it's like getting a whole extra two days of vacation. We'll be returning to the train, and dreading the day we have to take the whole family to the airport.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 02:38 PM | Permalink |
Houston, We Have Dialtone!
Friday - January 05, 2007 03:43 PM
Statistics on the subject differ only slightly and suggest that as e-mail became common many customer care operations embraced the technology as a "cheaper than the telephone". Some predicted that Internet communication would quickly come to replace the phone.
Didn't happen. What we saw was that the Net added a new communication channel, not replaced one. Phone volumes stayed at the same levels and total contacts increased by roughly 15% when e-mail was added.
And more recent hints suggest that the percent of e-mail contacts into customer care versus the telephone are actually decreasing. Thinking it through, that makes sense. Americans in particular are impatient. We want our answers now. Booting up the computer, trying to find/remember the correct web address, sorting through flashing and distracting graphics to find how to communicate (there ought to be some standards), typing the query, and then waiting (sometimes for days) for our answer; takes a LOT more time and effort than making a phone call.
Yesterday, I completed buying two nearly identical "things", both made by the same company. One was available over the net through a reseller, one wasn't. I made an e-mail inquiry of the re-seller on a feature of the thing and waited two days to get my positive answer. I placed the order electronically. I got an e-mail thanking me for my order; another with payment details, another advising of the shipping charges (causing me to make a call anyway to correct them), and another thanking me for my payment. Today, the supplier called back to ask if I wanted model A or model B of the thing, even though the answer was on several of the e-mails already sent. I had to call back and confirm it was "B". Notice this was a total of seven e-mails and three phone calls over several days. For the other virtually identical item, I called the company directly, ordered the part with a credit card and was promised shipping the same afternoon. A single 5 minute call versus 10 contacts over three days, clearer communication, and thing 2 cost $3.50 less and will arrive sooner. No way did the substitution of e-mail ordering instead of a real person save that reseller any overhead. All it did was cost me more time and money.
E-mail has its uses, but making the phone passe? No way.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Posted at 03:43 PM | Permalink |
Go Boomers!
Thursday - December 14, 2006 03:14 PM
They grew up when manners and respect was the norm, and prefer to be called Mr. or Mrs. Jones. Never call a GI by their first name unless and until permission is granted. They see others as authority figures and will ask for advice and recommendations so long as trust isn't violated.
Years of experience is important to them, and personal service and relationship building is expected of you. They will be concerned about money for the rest of their lives, so surcharges and late fees are very upsetting. You will be dealing with more women who have outlived their husbands and are now making decisions their spouse once handled, so need more attention and patience.
At the other end, are the post WW2 "Baby Boomers", a category into which I fit, and we could hardly be more different than the GIs. We grew up in comparative prosperity. Yet we saw Vietnam, feminists, the civil rights movement, assassinations and Watergate. We were the "Me" generation, rebellious and distrusting of government and big business.
Don't call us "Mr. or Mrs.". Makes us feel old and we see ourselves as forever young. We want to feel in charge. We're busy, so saving time is important. We were the first generation to use credit and we like it. But we also have a high social consciousness; anxious to make the world better, so showing me that a % of my purchase is going to a charitable cause is a major positive.
What the article also made me aware of is that between the GIs and the Boomers is "The Silent Generation" born later in the Depression and up till WW2 "Silents" are much harder to classify. They might have picked up on the values of their GI parents, yet they also saw the turmoil and changing mores when women were no longer seen only as homemakers and mothers. They seem comfortable reading printed materials, but are open to learning new things such as the Internet. Set clear expectations; stand by your word and stay tuned in to nuances telling you whether to treat a Silent as a GI or Boomer is the key to serving this group.
You cannot afford otherwise. Whether GI, Silent or Boomer, these groups own more than 3/4 of all assets in the US and earn more than half of all discretionary income, and by 2010 will have grown by yet another 30%.
Posted by Rick Rappe'
Posted at 03:14 PM | Permalink |
Arguments
Monday - December 04, 2006 03:30 PM
To me, this isn't all that different from the rest of the parade of failed Internet e-mail appliances (anyone remember the Audrey?). I just don't see that there's any meaningful market: in order to want an e-mail appliance, someone needs to (a) not have a computer or Internet access, (b) want to receive e-mail, and (c) can't or won't use a computer.
I think that most people who aren't currently online but want to be would rather just get a computer and learn how to use it. The e-mail printer costs $150 plus $100/year for the service (plus ink and paper--which will get expensive if you neglect to set up your spam filter), which is cheaper than a PC plus Internet access, but not that much cheaper--but the PC lets you do so much more, like actually reply to e-mail.
David, on the other hand, sees this as a promising service. He things grandkids will buy it for their grandparents as a convenient way to send photos and letters. This could be a way for technophobic or disabled people to at least receive--if not send--e-mail. And as for the cost, it seems a small price to pay to avoid the inconvenience of having to print stuff out and hunt for stamps and envelopes.
David things they've got a 20% or so chance of success. I see it as under 1%.
But if this sounds appealing, you can do the same thing yourself with a cheap fax machine and an e-mail to fax gateway service.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 03:30 PM | Permalink |