“Only” 600 Complaints a Year. Ouch.
While still writing Five-Star Customer Service, I attended a presentation given by one of the Boston area’s bank presidents on Best Practices. We in the audience sat there for an hour as she explained all of the terrific customer service initiatives that her bank had undertaken in the previous year, and the wonderful results they had seen thus far. Indeed, things had gotten better for this bank: now a full 88% of their customers were “satisfied or very satisfied” with this institution.
Not long ago, I met with a (self-proclaimed) billionaire car dealer who told me that they “only” receive about 600 complaints per year.
Just last week, the owner of a small IT firm accepted my book, which I was signing before my presentation, and said, “Great! I can’t wait to give it to my customer service guy. He could really use it.”
“I’ll see you at my talk, then,” I said with a smile.
He looked at me quizzically and said, “Do you think I’ll benefit from your seminar? After all, I’ve got someone to do customer service.”
What do these three business leaders, in three completely different fields, have in common? None of them gets it. None even comes close to getting it.
The Bank: Twelve percent of that large bank’s customers aren’t even “satisfied,” not to mention happy or Delighted. Having customers who are merely “satisfied” is nothing to brag about. After most meals, you’re “satisfied” – you’re full; you’re not hungry any more. But did you like the meal? Are you likely to go back? Would you recommend the restaurant to a friend?
“Satisfied” doesn’t mean Yes to any of these. The most that it means is, “Maybe.” But implicit in every Maybe is its evil twin, Maybe not.
When the question is customer service, you do not want to run a business on Maybes. Maybes will kill you. Merely “Satisfied” customers will spell the end of your firm, just as soon as an outstanding competitor enters the market to steal them from you.
The Car Dealer: “Only” 600 complaints a year? For accuracy’s sake, you’d have to multiply that number by about twenty. In other words, six hundred customers were kind enough to tell this car dealer what nearly twelve thousand did not: that they’re unhappy, frustrated, and not even “Satisfied.” This billionaire may win back some of the first six hundred, but he’s never even going to have a chance with the others, because they haven’t identified themselves.
As for his customers who aren’t unhappy, but who are only “Satisfied?” Will they buy from him again? Maybe. Or Maybe not.
The IT Firm: An owner or CEO cannot relegate customer service to an underling and consider it done. Why not? There are several considerations.
1. Customer service is not one department’s responsibility. Companies must have a culture of Delighting the customer, an internal ethic that stretches across all parts of the firm, from the board to engineering to accounts payable to tech support to sales to the mail room… Get the idea? Companies such as Lexus, Nordstrom, Wegman’s, Philips Lifeline, Ritz-Carlton, LL Bean, Saratoga Technologies, Wachovia, Zoots, Lands End, and all other Five-Star Customer Service providers have Customer Delight in their blood. People who work for these firms are intensely proud of their companies. That pride stems from quality, and that quality is derived from a single-minded focus on Spoiling the Customer Rotten.
2. Customer service leaders and their departments get no respect in most firms. Their function is seen as touchy-feely fluff by the rest of the company. Their job is to fix what the other departments break. Their entire function is an afterthought. This budget is the first to get slashed in lean times, the first to get outsourced and offshored. If Customer Delight isn’t the obsession of the CEO, it will never – never – reach that elusive Five-Star level. Indeed, it’ll almost certainly miss four-star status as well.
3. Even when the CEO is excited by the idea of superlative customer service, he can’t farm it out to someone below the C-level. He also must understand what Customer Delight really means: how it is defined, and how his company can make it happen. If he isn’t himself the master of this discipline, then he will not be able to adequately champion his company’s Customer Delight efforts. He may inadvertently get in their way.
What’s the upside to this cautionary tale? Nobody gets it. Business leaders have no clue about customer service: big banks don’t know that when 12% of its customers are dissatisfied, that’s 11.998% too many – and that there is something they can do about it. Car dealers don’t get that 600 complaints represents about 12,000 unhappy customers – and those 12,000 are going to make the competition rich. Even small business leaders, who should know best where their bread is buttered, don’t see the benefit of a tireless commitment to Customer Delight.
…So, if you get it, your fortune is virtually assured. And that’s some really good news for you.
Friday, October 13, 2006
There is a new low in customer service.
What I am about to share is, to me, the clearest sign I have ever seen that customer service is in decline from its already abysmal state.
Last week I was at an IT conference when a member of my audience tipped me off to the following abomination. I have since called the perpetrator to get confirmation, as well as more detail. Here is what I learned:
When you order a product from Dell, you have three options for service on that product. The Economy plan allows you to ship it back to them for repair for one year. This level of service is included in the price (so it’s kind of “free.” Kind of.)
The Mobility plan gives you all sorts of extra protection, which they call “Complete Care.” (I guess that implies that Economy service is for cheapos who will take incomplete care to save a buck.) With Mobility, if you drop your laptop out of the helicopter over Lake Michigan, for instance, they’ll fix it for you – assuming you find it, I suppose. This one costs $103 for one year, at least for the laptop I was calling about.
So far, so good. That’s not to say that I’m crazy about paying for any type of a product warrantee, but such is business these days: we pay extra to insure the stuff we buy, in case it was made poorly. Weird if you think about it, but I can’t go tilting at every windmill that comes along. I have to choose my windmills.
Dell has a third level of service. This one is $265 for two years (there is no one-year option, I gather). They call this Standard service, which seems like a compliance enticement: this is “regular;” it’s a minimum. “Come on, everybody else is doing it… It isn’t fancy or frivolous; it’s standard!” they seem to be saying.
With Standard service, you get Complete Care plus Gold tech support. This is what my phone-pal at Dell told me you are buying with this Gold level of support:
1. A North American techie.
2. Techies have two years of experience or more.
3. Techies have advanced training.
4. Reduced wait time.
5. Techies aren’t compelled to lead you through the standard line of questioning at the start of every call (for instance, “Is your computer on? Please turn it off, then turn it back on.”)
6. While remote log in (Dell Connect) is now standard, you get additional bells and whistles at the Gold level.
Let me tell you what you can infer from this list of Gold features.
1. If you don’t pay $265, the techie you reach will be in India, and you won’t be able to understand him. When you ask him to repeat himself for the fifth time, he will shout, “Don’t you understand English!?!”
2. If you fail to shell out an additional $265 for the laptop you buy, the techie you reach will not have the experience he needs to help you.
3. He will also lack sufficient training.
4. Most Dell customers are forced to wait a long time for help. Therefore, it behooves you to pay $265 to get out of “on hold” limbo.
5. Dell is keenly aware that its customers are frustrated when forced to go through a whole series of tests each time they call. However, even if the customer knows what the problem is, Dell still forces them to go through these hoops. That way, customers will choose to pay $265 to get around this. Dell has created a disincentive for itself to improve its basic level of service. To Dell, basic (“free”) customer service doesn’t pay.
6. I don’t know what this means. My pal didn’t clarify what “extra stuff” means. I just know that, if you pay an additional $265 for your computer, then Dell trouble-shoots extra-well. If you don’t, then their remote help may fail, I assume through lack of effort on their part.
Shouldn’t minimum standards for tech support include techies who speak English and who have the know-how to help you? And do we really deserve to pay extra to have a shorter wait time, or to avoid the same old diagnostics that didn’t help the last time? Shouldn’t you be able to opt out of that sort of thing?
Dell knows its customers are frustrated with its service, so it decided to charge to stop frustrating them. Wow.
“At least Dell offers an opportunity to buy acceptable customer service,” you might argue. “Most companies don’t even give you that option.” Okay. But I’ve never heard of a company so cynical that it offers zero- or one-star customer service, then charges for something better. This is a new low, as I said earlier, and it shocks me. If it doesn’t shock you, too, then that’s saying something powerfully dismal right there, I’d argue right back.
My lawyer wants to make sure I stress that this is my opinion on what you can infer about Dell. I’m not saying it’s all true; only that I’m pretty sure it is. 99.8% sure.
I have inferred something else about Dell. Michael Dell has figured out how to build an empire, and save people a whole ton of money while doing it. For that I commend him. However, his name is also on the company that makes its customers pay extra – lots extra – for what is, to me, a basic level of customer service. I’d be ashamed to put my name to that.
(Note: my phone pal, the sales guy at Dell, was terrific. He couldn’t have been more helpful, knowledgeable, or polite. I can infer from that that Dell recognizes the value of great customer service in the sales process; it’s once we’re locked in that they abuse us.)
What I am about to share is, to me, the clearest sign I have ever seen that customer service is in decline from its already abysmal state.
Last week I was at an IT conference when a member of my audience tipped me off to the following abomination. I have since called the perpetrator to get confirmation, as well as more detail. Here is what I learned:
When you order a product from Dell, you have three options for service on that product. The Economy plan allows you to ship it back to them for repair for one year. This level of service is included in the price (so it’s kind of “free.” Kind of.)
The Mobility plan gives you all sorts of extra protection, which they call “Complete Care.” (I guess that implies that Economy service is for cheapos who will take incomplete care to save a buck.) With Mobility, if you drop your laptop out of the helicopter over Lake Michigan, for instance, they’ll fix it for you – assuming you find it, I suppose. This one costs $103 for one year, at least for the laptop I was calling about.
So far, so good. That’s not to say that I’m crazy about paying for any type of a product warrantee, but such is business these days: we pay extra to insure the stuff we buy, in case it was made poorly. Weird if you think about it, but I can’t go tilting at every windmill that comes along. I have to choose my windmills.
Dell has a third level of service. This one is $265 for two years (there is no one-year option, I gather). They call this Standard service, which seems like a compliance enticement: this is “regular;” it’s a minimum. “Come on, everybody else is doing it… It isn’t fancy or frivolous; it’s standard!” they seem to be saying.
With Standard service, you get Complete Care plus Gold tech support. This is what my phone-pal at Dell told me you are buying with this Gold level of support:
1. A North American techie.
2. Techies have two years of experience or more.
3. Techies have advanced training.
4. Reduced wait time.
5. Techies aren’t compelled to lead you through the standard line of questioning at the start of every call (for instance, “Is your computer on? Please turn it off, then turn it back on.”)
6. While remote log in (Dell Connect) is now standard, you get additional bells and whistles at the Gold level.
Let me tell you what you can infer from this list of Gold features.
1. If you don’t pay $265, the techie you reach will be in India, and you won’t be able to understand him. When you ask him to repeat himself for the fifth time, he will shout, “Don’t you understand English!?!”
2. If you fail to shell out an additional $265 for the laptop you buy, the techie you reach will not have the experience he needs to help you.
3. He will also lack sufficient training.
4. Most Dell customers are forced to wait a long time for help. Therefore, it behooves you to pay $265 to get out of “on hold” limbo.
5. Dell is keenly aware that its customers are frustrated when forced to go through a whole series of tests each time they call. However, even if the customer knows what the problem is, Dell still forces them to go through these hoops. That way, customers will choose to pay $265 to get around this. Dell has created a disincentive for itself to improve its basic level of service. To Dell, basic (“free”) customer service doesn’t pay.
6. I don’t know what this means. My pal didn’t clarify what “extra stuff” means. I just know that, if you pay an additional $265 for your computer, then Dell trouble-shoots extra-well. If you don’t, then their remote help may fail, I assume through lack of effort on their part.
Shouldn’t minimum standards for tech support include techies who speak English and who have the know-how to help you? And do we really deserve to pay extra to have a shorter wait time, or to avoid the same old diagnostics that didn’t help the last time? Shouldn’t you be able to opt out of that sort of thing?
Dell knows its customers are frustrated with its service, so it decided to charge to stop frustrating them. Wow.
“At least Dell offers an opportunity to buy acceptable customer service,” you might argue. “Most companies don’t even give you that option.” Okay. But I’ve never heard of a company so cynical that it offers zero- or one-star customer service, then charges for something better. This is a new low, as I said earlier, and it shocks me. If it doesn’t shock you, too, then that’s saying something powerfully dismal right there, I’d argue right back.
My lawyer wants to make sure I stress that this is my opinion on what you can infer about Dell. I’m not saying it’s all true; only that I’m pretty sure it is. 99.8% sure.
I have inferred something else about Dell. Michael Dell has figured out how to build an empire, and save people a whole ton of money while doing it. For that I commend him. However, his name is also on the company that makes its customers pay extra – lots extra – for what is, to me, a basic level of customer service. I’d be ashamed to put my name to that.
(Note: my phone pal, the sales guy at Dell, was terrific. He couldn’t have been more helpful, knowledgeable, or polite. I can infer from that that Dell recognizes the value of great customer service in the sales process; it’s once we’re locked in that they abuse us.)
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