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:
- The best way to grow is to get more customers who are promoters and fewer who are detractors.
- Define the associate’s role in taking care of the customer first.
- The recession gave Home Depot an opportunity to revamp its supply chain, improve merchandising systems, and focus on serving customers better.
- If you combine a compelling merchandising offer with outstanding customer service, you will get improved transactions.
- Simplify things for the stores, giving them three primary things to focus on: remaining in stock, store appearance, and customer service.
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.
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.
- Finish strong. This somehow debunks the notion that “first impressions last,” because according to behavioral psychology (BP), a relatively weak start and a modest upswing at the end is better than a great start and a mediocre finish.
- Get the bad experiences out of the way early. Deal with anxious and inexperienced customers on a regular basis. BP believes that people prefer to deal with not-so-good news first and then the good news so that they can savor the latter.
- Segment the pleasure, combine the pain. Break pleasant experiences into multiple sateges to stretch out the enjoyment and combine unpleasant activities into a single stage or event.
- Build commitment through choice. It is better to allow customers some measure of control over their customer experience even at the risk of introducing extra cost and complexity.
- Let people have their rituals. Build and nurture tradition/rituals with your customers. That also means building relationships with them.
The government is known for its bureaucratic ways. Because of this, people don’t really expect good service. Rather when they do transact with government they expect red tape, long lines, longer waits.
This is the reason why Mike Merrill, the Hillsborough County (Tampa) administrator earlier this year, had to take action. He didn’t want bureaucracy to get in the way of good service.
According to Merrill, his goal is to empower employees at all levels to act independently when customers need help. Merrill is also pushing for the “shopping mall mentality,” where it’s easy for people to find shops. In this case, people will find it easy to find departments or agencies in government, and when they do, they are served well and in real time.
He further says,
Replicating that attitude at the county level won’t be too hard, Merrill predicts. Many employees enjoy helping people, he said, and given more latitude to do that will make their jobs more satisfying.
“They’re not just sitting there grinding out work day after day,” he said. “There’s a connection.”
Read: Merrill wants Hillsborough to emphasize customer service
According to Grace Murray Hopper, The most damaging phrase in the language is: ‘It’s always been done that way.’
We often hear people say that it’s the company policy. They cannot do anything about it. Ms. Hopper above says it well.
An article on livemint.com says that:
The rulebook should not become an excuse for poor customer service or an obstacle to great service. Almost everyone has at some point experienced a situation where a customer service representative has blamed the rules for his inability to help.
As I’ve kept telling my teammates, too, the policies are there to guide us. But they are not carved in stone. A few accommodations here and there won’t hurt for as long as it’s for the good of the majority and for the company. Having said this, I agree with the article when it says that:
One customer service mantra that I have always loved is: first to know, first to handle. In other words, when a problem arises, there is a fleeting opportunity to solve it on the spot.
This can only be done when we have empowered our people to make decisions and make them stand by the decisions they make.
I once asked my husband, how he empowered his team. His reply: “Train them!” And for the record his team members have gone on to become heads of offices themselves. To this, a leadership mantra rang in my mind: leadership is producing more leaders.
Now, going back to customer service representatives (all employees are, actually), these people can be trained to make good decisions on the spot. This way, you don’t lose customers but gain more customers.
Train your people because the keyword for customer service is customer service.
Many companies have outsourced their customer service. Does it affect the kind of service the customer expects from that company? From observation, I think it does.
For example, I know company A, based in the US, to be good in customer service. But when they outsourced their customer service and I call their hotline and talk to someone from another country, I don’t seem to get the warm service that I was used to getting from the company. This is because the principles followed by the outsourcing company may not be aligned with those of company A.
Alignment is the keyword here.
Now, there’s a study done by Contact Center Satisfaction Index (CCSI) from CFI Group. The study reveals that offshoring outsourcing is harmful to customer service.
The CCSI report, released just as the U.S. midterm election campaigns swing into high gear and a month before NBC premieres a new sitcom on offshoring called Outsourced, found that offshore contact centers score 27 percent lower in customer satisfaction than those based in the U.S. Foreign-based contact centers score less in every single category, from first call resolution to customer service.
The biggest argument for repatriating a contact center is the almost unprecedented level of dissatisfaction associated with offshore agents, says the study. It found that contact center satisfaction is only 58 out of 100 when the call is handled by an offshore agent, compared to 79 for U.S.-based agents. To put a score of 58 in perspective, satisfaction with the IRS is about the same, with a score of 55. There is also the issue of concern by American consumers of seeing jobs being exported at a time of lingering high unemployment.
My friend J Dresdow shared:
I recently ran across an article in Inc. magazine that really highlights how Google and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can make or break a company. Imagine your company dropping off the top of the list overnight. Well it happened with this company and made them better for it.
This article isn’t online yet because it’s in the current issue of Inc. But I have taken a photo of it for those that are interested.
Click here for a bigger version.
It’s true that businesses these days are doing marketing online and are using SEO strategies to rank high in the search engine results. Thus, it is no longer a case of your business appearing in searches because customers search for the business specifically, but more of leveraging keywords and feed the choice to the customers.
You can say that online marketing in a way debunks the WOMMA phenomenon. If you hire good SEO experts, chances are your business will rank in the search engine results and that means more customers your way.
But what about the customer service aspect of your business? Isn’t it that customers go to you and search for your business because they have had a good customer experience with you? Or people have been talking about your exceptional customer service that they spread the good word about you, and so more people find themselves on your landing page?
Where is the customer service in the equation: e-commerce + SEO = good business?
Mark your calendars on the dates, September 16-17, 2010 and head for San Francisco, California at the Argonaut Hotel
for the 5th Annual Customer Experience Management & Retention Conference.
Hosted by marcus evans, one of the world’s leading providers and promoters of global summits strategic conferences, the event listed the following key conference topics:
- Design a more value driven customer experience strategy to navigate during an economic recession.
- Plan satisfaction metrics including net promoter and satisfaction stats to show financial impact and gauge customer insight.
- Marry customer feedback and response data collected to drive business process change.
- Maximize internal strategic business partnership for customer satisfaction to achieve enterprise-wide gains.
- Develop customer loyalty that repels recession.
The speakers who will be attending the conference are from leading companies including Thomson Reuters, BMO Financial Group, Wildblue Communication, Cisco, Yahoo, DirecTV, Polycom, Wells Fargo, Hallmark, Microsoft, Michelin North America, Phillips Medical Systems and many more.
If you were to ask me, this event is timely and relevant to the times. Plus the fact that the attendees are a focused group of senior level executives, you can expect a valuable interaction and learning experience.
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