Here in the Philippines, Christmas time equates a mad rush of shopping frenzy. Parking lots overflow into the streets, and so expect terrible traffic jams!

So if you were to test an establishment’s customer service, this is the best time to do it. Is there grace under pressure?

I went to SM Makati last night, and as I expected, the mall was packed, the lines to the cashiers are long. But I have to hand it to SM for the following:

1. Their sales personnel are on the floor ready to help shoppers.
2. The sales people are very friendly; greets shoppers and really go out of their way to help, find, dig up sizes of shoes, clothing, and what have you.
3. Plenty of checkout counters are placed in strategic areas of the department store. I like it that in every counter, there is a box of Christmas wrappers, Christmas paper bags, ribbons, and small greeting cards. It makes things so convenient.
4. Their cashiers ar fast, may your transaction be in cash or credit card!
5. SM has practically everything you need in one place.

From my experience, SM people have really been trained well when it comes serving shoppers. If they sustain this, they’ll be assured of repeat business with happy customers.

Interestingly, I stumbled upon an article, titled Good Customer service is Key to Capturing Holiday Shoppers. According to the article, 60 percent shop more often at certain online sites, and 50 percent shop more often at specific retail stores, because of a good customer experience. You can read about it more here.

Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), one of the top local banks in the country, recently rolled out the paperless transaction using the BPI Express Assistant Machine.

The BPI Express Assistant Machine is like the other automated machines where you choose the kind of transaction that you are going to do.  Based on what I did the last time I went to the bank and used the machine, this is how it went:

1. Touch the window screen choosing your type of transaction: Deposit, Withdrawal, Bills Payment
2. I chose Deposit.
3. I was then asked if I were going to make a check or a cash deposit. I chose check deposit.
4. I was asked to key in the issuing bank, the check #, and the amount.
5. After a few buttons, I was asked to input my account #.
6. Done.
7. The machine then spits out a paper indicating my priority number.

(Too bad, I can’t use a mobile phone inside the bank, I was not able to take a photo of the machine.)

The procedure, I think, took me only 15 seconds or so. I didn’t need to fill out a deposit slip. Holding my priority number, I took a seat and waited for my turn for about a minute or two.

When it was my turn, I gave my check to the teller. A few seconds after, I got my already filled out deposit slip.

Easy does it.

As far as I know, it is only BPI that uses this paperless transaction. It makes for a good, efficient, and fast customer service. Much improvement from their old system of lining up and waiting for hours to be served.

Let me also tell you about BPI’s convenient banking online. I can send funds, pay bills online and mobile instantly!

Congratulations on this one, BPI! Yes, you take us farther!

Guest post by: Anna Marie Cabagsican

Business is not merely marketing and gaining profit. In fact, it is about real-time experience that should last for a lifetime. With start-up businesses, this is something they often fail to foresee. On the other hand, this could be a thing missing in big companies who have already taken a name in the industry. They might somehow lose the enthusiasm they had on the first onset of the company. They are popular so people would go after them – a big No No. Whether it’s a small or big  business, it isn’t always about money. One impressive way of handling the market is to build good relationship with your customers. So, this would mean having well characterized customer service and representatives.

I’ve read an article from Social Entrepreneur, The Secret to Entrepreneurship is to Give More Than You Get, which talks about entrepreneurship as creating value. Right away after reading the item, I was directed at looking into customer service on the other side. The side that is usually blocked by the idea of customer service as giving assistance alone. It somehow made me realize that customer service takes in a lot of values usually found and needed in our daily venture.

Here are some of the quotes of values taken from the article that really struck me:

• you  must give to get
• give before you expect to receive
• you need to give the earth a number of seeds so that crops my grow in your field
• you need to give your business nurturing so that it may bear fruit in the way of profit and value for other people

I know these quotes of values are familiar to you and even graders could know them too. But sometimes we miss the point of why we demand for a good business on our employees or expect higher sales from consumers. Andrew Mennie of CRM gave it a point: Ever wondered how much customer satisfaction is worth? We all know and accept that it is a strategic goal for all organizations involved in the delivery of customer service? Definitely, customer satisfaction is hard to attain, maintain, and measure.

However, the Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos  also once said, “If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”

Here’s another hot serving of CustServ roundup. Read and learn about customer service and customer experiences. 

RJ Owen shares on O’Reilly InsideRia Paul Ford’s article on “The Web is a Customer Service Medium.” The article presents a very compelling case that the Web is specifically “for” the purpose of letting people express their opinions. I agree! Anyone who has access to the Internet and social media can air his sentiments and opinions on any matter and in a matter of seconds, his ideas are picked up and shared on the Web. Read more…

On the Financial News of MyBankTracker.com is an article on “The Future of Customer Service Professions.” The article says, Customer Service is the true determinant of any business’s success, but as technology advances it looks like customer service is a dying profession. Read more…

Kate Legget shares with CustomerThink about “Forrester’s 5 Key Capabilities for Customer Service.”  The article has good insights on how to survive in a highly competitive business arena through customer service. Read more…

I understand how JD Longstreet feel in his article, “The Hell of Dealing With Customer Service in America.” Read on…

Hospitality Times gives focus on calculating the ROI for customer service. The article, “HR must change how ROI for customer service is calculated.” It says, HRDs must shift customer service away from measuring customer satisfaction and into much more complex areas, such as how customers perceive the value of their relationship with the company. Read more…

How many of us make that call only to be more frustrated than we were?

We hear a lot of stories about rude customer service reps or CSRs who were not much of a help in the first place. Well, there’s hope for the flowers after all. A software has been developed that matches a CSR with a customer.  It is a call-matching technology called Real-Time Analytics Matching Platform (RAMP). The matching is based on granular characters where a CSR is matched with a customer in terms of “customers’ customers’ persistency, the CSRs’ tenure and ability to save a customer, and the financial metrics around the customers” among other things.

IBM acquired RAMP last year. Find out more about this call-matching technology.  Read on…

Does climate change affect customer service?

In light of the flooding and landslides happening in unexpected places, I can’t help thinking about how these events can  impact customer service.

Here in the country for example, when the power goes out due to heavy rains or wind, the hotline of Meralco almost always becomes unavailable. Perhaps, due to the volume of calls coming their way, too.

Good thing, I stumbled upon an article by Douglas Hartman. Titled How Climate Change Impacts Utility Customer Service, the article discusses what to do.

Read on…

PRESS RELEASE

Entries up 60% This Year; People’s Choice Stevie Awards Voting Opens Tomorrow

Fairfax, VA – January 13, 2011 – Finalists were announced today in the 5th Annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, an international competition recognizing excellence in disciplines that are crucial to business success.

Organizations as diverse as Apple, Capital One Financial, India’s Tata Motors, and Telecom Italia are among those recognized in the customer service awards, call center awards, and sales awards categories.  Organizations with Finalists in multiple categories include CIGNA Government Services, Austria’s Competence Call Center AG, Direct Alliance, the UK’s Everything Everywhere, Marsh U.S. Consumer, PetRays, Canada’s SMART Technologies, and SurePayroll. For a full list of Finalists, visit www.stevieawards.com/sales.

Stevie Award winners will be announced during a gala banquet on Monday, February 21 at the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. Tickets are now on sale.  The awards are presented by the Stevie® Awards, which organizes several of the world’s leading business awards shows including the prestigious American Business Awards. The Stevies are widely considered to be the world’s premier business awards.

Entries were up 60% this year for consideration in more than 90 categories, including individual and team sales categories as well as individual and team customer service and contact center categories. Several new categories were added this year, including 12 categories to recognize new products and services for sales, contact/call center, and sales professionals as well as seven categories to recognize the achievements of solution providers to these professionals.

Members of the Awards’ Board of Distinguished Judges & Advisors will select Stevie Award winners from among the Finalists during final judging later this month.   Finalists were chosen by business professionals worldwide during preliminary judging.

Beginning tomorrow, the general public will be able to cast their votes for their favorite providers of good customer service in the People’s Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite Customer Service Department.  Voting will open at http://www.stevieawards.com/Service.peopleschoice.  Winners of the People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Customer Service in multiple industries will be determined in mid-February and honored at the awards gala in Miami Beach on February 21.

About The Stevie Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in four programs: The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.  Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide.  Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.stevieawards.com.

Sponsors of the 5^th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service include American Support, Infogroup, The Sales Management Association andValueSelling Associates.

Banks here have very stringent rules. For example, they would ask for 2 even 3 IDs for a customer to open a bank account. I remember one time, my nanny wanted to open a savings account. But she only had one ID–the SSS ID. She had to get a postal ID (another government ID that banks recognize) and wait for three weeks to get it before she could open a savings account.

Perhaps, brought about by experiences of fraudulent transactions in the past but sometimes it can go way overboard.

Mail&Guardian online publishes a study that highlights what customers want from their banks. Some of the findings are:

• Nearly two-thirds of executives (63%) cited “lifetime” customer value as a primary factor they will use to manage customer profitability over the next three years.
• Fifty-three percent of executives acknowledged a decline of trust in banking brands as a key customer response to the financial crisis.
• Most said customer savings had increased (70%) and appetite for credit decreased (53%) in response to the crisis.

Read: Banks will struggle to meet customers’ demands, says survey

Marvin Ellison, the executive vice president of U.S. stores for The Home Depot, took his VP post at a time when Home Depot’s customer service dipped and people had stopped spending.

The challenge to improve Home Depot’s customer service and get people to visit Home Depot and buy was really daunting. But Ellison seems to have helped Home Depot made the turn around.

BusinessWeek checked on Mr. Ellison in May 2009 and learned a lot from him. A few insights follows:

1. The best way to grow is to get more customers who are promoters and fewer who are detractors.
2. Define the associate’s role in taking care of the customer first.
3. The recession gave Home Depot an opportunity to revamp its supply chain, improve merchandising systems, and focus on serving customers better.
4. If you combine a compelling merchandising offer with outstanding customer service, you will get improved transactions.
5. Simplify things for the stores, giving them three primary things to focus on: remaining in stock, store appearance, and customer service.

Read more…

When I read this part of the article, I said to myself, “now this is serving with the heart.”

In July, the mother of four spotted hundreds of teens milling about the Milton GO station well after service had halted for the day.

The teens didn’t know better. They’d been at a rock concert all day and now they were stranded.

Fleet immediately called her supervisors. “I told them we needed extra assistance,” she said. Soon, a rescue mission was in the works as drivers, volunteering to work on their day off, took the teens home.

“They’re the customers of our future,” said Danielle La Plante, a GO safety and training instructor who personally drove two teenage girls home in a company car.

“I have kids,” La Plante added. “You don’t leave a 14- or 18-year-old in the middle of nowhere.”

Proc said that’s the kind of pride and care for customers that GO has been attempting to instill in its staff during six months of training.

Read more…

I am a mother, too, and I so I know how it feels to worry about kids not home yet when they should be. All sorts of scenarios would often cross our minds: they could be stranded, or worse, held up by bad people. It’s heartwarming to know that there are people and institutions out there who serve with their hearts.