I have worked in the customer service industry for my entire working life - restaurants, fast food, call center. It's been an interesting experience, as I have been privileged enough to see both the best and the worst of people. Working in the customer service industry has changed my outlook on people and forced me to re-evaluate my stances on certain matters. It's something I think every person should experience, in fact. You can learn a lot from spending time in this field.
But this blog isn't about my stories from that end of the customer experience perspective. See, we're in the middle of this whole economic downturn and such. Without getting too much into the politics or the economic policies that have caused this crash, it remains obvious that businesses are fighting harder than ever before to keep their profit margins high. Most companies are doing this using the usual methods using headcount reduction and other cost reduction techniques such as the product shrink ray (by which products are sold in smaller sizes for the same price) and cheaper materials/ingredients.
I will tell you right now that this is the wrong way to approach things! Particularly where it involves headcount reduction. Laying off the work force is the beginning of a long and painful downward spiral. More layoffs means less money being spent in the economy, which leads to more layoffs, etc., etc. This does apply the fallacious slippery slope argument, but the logic behind it is sound.
So, where does that leave companies? How do they save money, or, more importantly, how do they continue to make money? I would propose that customer experience is the answer.
You see, when a company gives a customer a great experience, the customer will be more loyal to that company. It's a simple principle really, and it goes back to the golden rule: treat others the way you wish to be treated. When a customer is treated with respect - like a person instead of a customer - that person is much more likely to continue buying or using products from the place where he or she felt respected. I'll tell you my story about Whole Foods. Yes, I shop there. I live on a tight budget and I understand that they are more expensive than other grocery stores. However, there are several things I like better about shopping there than elsewhere, and they all boil down to the employees. I can ask somebody in the deli the best way to cook the particular piece of meat I just bought, and an answer is always provided. I'll ask a question about the gluten content of certain products, and employees can answer them. Second, I am treated like a person there, not just some random guy walking down the aisles or standing in line. The people are personable and friendly.
Whole Foods is one of the precious few companies out there that truly understands how to survive in this type of economy. They do it through several means that I think are important to highlight:
Customer-centric policies - Take, for example, their return policy. No questions asked returns and exchanges. I have never been turned down for a return, ever. The employee at the customer service desk smiles, apologizes for whatever my issue with the product was, then promptly issues a refund. It is a cliche by now, but the customer is always right. One of the most important lessons I learned in the customer service industry is that a long-term customer is profitable. Doing what it takes in the short-term to create a long-term customer is almost always worth the investment of time and money.
Another aspect to this point is that employees should never hide behind a policy. Phrases like "I'm sorry, that is against policy" make for a very poor customer experience. I am very likely to discontinue doing business with any company that makes policies against helping their customers. In cases where any sort of policy or circumstance stands in the way of an employee finding a resolution for a customer, that employee should not hide behind or explain said policy. The employee should be finding a way to work around or within the policy or circumstance to resolve the customer's issue. I'd like to share a story here that better illustrates this point. This comes from an article posted by Magic's head designer in his weekly column, and it details a great customer experience he had on a Disney Cruise. I highly recommend reading the entire article, as he touches on many of the same points I do. (You can read the whole article here).
The ship has three restaurants (actually many more than that if you count all the different places on the ship to get food, but three main dining areas for dinner). The way dining works is that you rotate what restaurant you are in each night, but your wait staff and dinner companions always move with you. The first night I was in Lumiere's, I was served a Coke. Now, I'm a bit of a Coke snob, and I'm extra sensitive to fountain mixes of syrup and carbonation. The mix was off, and it was not enjoyable to drink. I reported this to the person who handled my drinks.
Within a minute I was talking to her boss, who was very interested in why I didn't like my Coke. Then within another minute I had a can of Coke and a glass of ice sitting in front of me. While they took their time investigating what was wrong, they wanted me to have a Coke that I was happy with. Once they realized that the problem was not something that could be fixed on the ship, they made sure that every time I ate in that restaurant all my Coke came from cans.
A common mistake in this circumstance would be to explain to me why the Coke tasted bad. That's a mistake because it wouldn't address my problem. I didn't really care why I didn't have the drink I wanted. I cared that I didn't have the drink. The staff was well trained to make me happy rather than provide me with answers about why I was unhappy.
Educated Employees - How many times have you called a call center and talked to somebody who was obviously reading a script. As a customer, that's very off-putting. Why can't this company that I'm paying for a product/service take the time to actually make sure their employees know about their products/services? Most grocery stores approach service the same way. Hire anybody, show them how to navigate the store, then turn them loose. Whole Foods is not content with this approach. Not only do their employees know where to find products, they can also tell you about those products - how the plant or animal was raised, what kind of hormones were used in them, how those affect the quality, what foods certain people can and can't eat and why, the list goes on. And what a difference that makes when it comes to shopping there.
For example - A friend of mine, with whom I visit Whole Foods often, has something in her bowels that prevents her from correctly processing certain kinds of foods. It's got some barely-pronounceable, impossible to spell name, yet when she went in there with questions about how certain foods interacted with her condition, they were ready with answers. Suffice it to say, they created, not just one, but two long-term customers simply by having people who can answer questions in an educated manner.
Friendly Employees - This one seems like it should be utterly obvious, but this is one of the things I see missed most often. Many times, I will walk through a store or talk to somebody on the phone, and it is plainly obvious that this person does not want to be talking to me. Employees often sound bored, irritated, apathetic - really everything except what they should be feeling. Ideally, we, as customers, should be able to wander into any store and be attended to by employees who are friendly and treat us as people rather than customers. Again, this is one thing Whole Foods nails. The employees there are friendly, conversational, and most importantly, respectful. I have never once been treated like a customer. I am treated like a person, which has made a world of difference to me from the first moment I walked through the doors. When asking people why they shop at Whole Foods instead of other supermarkets, "friendly employees," is the answer I hear most often.
Many, many companies take ridiculous approaches when it comes to the attitudes of their employees. Most companies fall into one of two categories when it comes to this - either the company doesn't care how employees act so long as they are not abusing customers (they can often be heard stating that they cannot control how their employees are acting), and the other group would rather dish out punishments against employees for not being happy. I believe that both of these mentalities are incorrect. In most cases, an employee's behavior while on the job is directly related to the the company culture. In all of my work experience as both a front-line employee dealing directly with customers and as a manager trying to motivate those employees, I can tell you one thing that is true above all other things in the customer service world: happy employees make for happy customers.
Step back and think about that for a second. An employee who is happy in his or her job is more likely to treat customers as people. The smiles will be genuine, they'll be more open to having conversations with customers, and happy employees are less likely to react poorly in circumstances where a customer is voicing dissatisfaction. Making happy employees is really simple, really. As a corporation, you must show the employees that you care about them and their well-being. Benefits, paid vacation, incentive programs, management involvement with employees, this list could go on for pages. Many things that make for happy employees cost money, sure, but the benefits are far greater than the expense. Increasing the things a company does for its employees has many effects - most notably a decrease in turnover and an increase in customer retention. Decreasing turnover is very important for many reasons. Firstly, hiring and training a new person is almost always much more expensive than keeping an existing, knowledgeable employee. Like I mentioned before, a happy employee is more likely to treat customers with respect, which has beneficial effects on both customer retention and new customer growth.
My point is this - the happier a business keeps its employees, the more likely those employees will be to A) stick around longer, lowering your employee acquisition/training costs, and B) make customers happier - which has the added bonus of customer retention and the valuable word of mouth.
One point that ties in with this that I often find overlooked by folks in the management world is the effect that tenured, friendly employees can have on the customers themselves. How many of you have a restaurant you can go to where one (or many) of the staff members knows your name and what you order? When a representative of a company knows an individual personally, an emotional connection is formed between the company and the customer. This invaluable from a business standpoint, as customers with an emotional investment in a company are much less likely to take their business elsewhere, and they are more likely to recommend that company to their friends. The only way this personal connection works is when employees are happy enough to stick around.
I have another story for you. When I was working at Burger King, we had a group of folks that came in every morning. They would come in, order a breakfast combo, talk to the employees, then spend probably an hour or so eating and talking amongst themselves and with us. They were loyal to our particular store (they came in every day), not because of the food, but because of the people. You can get cheap eggs and sausage on some bread at any number of fast food joints, but they came to our store every day because the people who worked there knew their names, orders, and things that were going on in their lives. As time passed, that group grew bigger and bigger, until soon we had a dining room full of people every morning. Over the years I worked in that store, we made literally thousands of dollars from the purchases these folks made, which is a big deal in the fast food business.
Eventually, the shoddy working conditions and lack of interest from franchisees ended up catching up with the crew, myself included. A large volume of us ended up leaving the store for greener pastures. It didn't take long before that group to discontinued doing business at that Burger King. The emotional investment was gone, and so was their business. The general manager of the store ended up moving companies - one that treated her with more respect and worked hard to make sure she was happy as an employee - and the group ended up migrating over to her new place of employment. They still meet there every day.
I have a great example of these things being done wrong. The United States Postal service, like most companies, is great when they work, and utterly miserable when they don't. My friend sent a box of Sigg bottles through USPS for part of Sigg's BPA recall debacle. The bottles got to (I believe) the New Hampshire post office, where they were promptly lost. She had purchased the tracking option for the return, so after the bottles sat at that post office for several days, she called the post office to inquire about them. She was told they would investigate the matter, given a ticket number, and was told she would receive a call back within 48 hours. 4 days pass without a call, so she calls them again. She is informed that the bottles were lost and that the ticket had been closed. The representative to whom she was speaking refused to speak to why she hadn't received a call back. She requested that they continue investigating, so she was once again given a ticket number and the promise of a 48 hour call back. Once again, she did not receive that call, so she put in yet another call to the customer service folks. The ticket had again been closed without the promised call. She wanted to know what the post office planned to do about her $120 in lost goods. The post office answer: nothing. Not only was the representative she was talking to not going to even try to do anything, the lady was very rude about it. My friend put the call on speaker phone, and I was offended by the tone and the attitude the representative was using.
The reasoning behind the representative's refusal to help was that my friend hadn't purchased insurance, so they were not responsible for her lost package. Her tone suggested that she should just take the answer at face value and hang up.
This brings me around to the three points I made earlier - First, the policy is not customer-centric. The idea that one would have to pay extra money to make sure the Post Office employees do their jobs correctly is ridiculous from a customer standpoint. The fact that the Post Office refuses to take responsibility for their employees' actions is even more aggravating. The employee used this policy as an excuse for her refusal to do anything.
This behavior is usually caused by a lack of education, in this case on the Post Office's part. When my friend was threatening to never use the Post Office again, the employee stood firm on the policy high ground, when a single gesture of simple customer service very well have maintained my friend's business. Remember that a long-term customer will always make up for any profits lost while resolving the customer's short-term issues. The Post Office ignored that rule, and now my friend has started using UPS and FedEx for all her shipping needs and encourages those around her to do likewise. In fact, because of her experience, I also no longer use the Post Office for any of my shipping.
Taken as a whole, I believe that creating a great customer experience is paramount to a business continuing to be profitable in the current - or any - economic conditions. Using the three principles I mentioned above, companies can acquire and retain their customers sheerly through the good will of the customers who shop there or use their products/services.
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