Welcome to Mainstay’s Customer Service Tips

This months Customer Service Tips addresses a range of issues including that perennial question of whether the customer is always right. In particular how to deal with a customer who believes they are always right and lets you know in no uncertain terms.

We also talk about setting customer commitments and then meeting them. Or if you can’t resetting the commitment as early as possible. Our final article this month asks you to think about how easy, or difficult it is for your customers to contact you. And our featured company this month is AFEX whose customer centric approach is to help small and medium enterprises with foreign currency transactions by tailoring specific solutions to meet their needs.

Before your read this months tips I thought I would mention a couple of customer experiences I have experienced over the last little while. I hope they provide food for thought in terms of how interactions with customers at ‘the moment of truth’ might impact customer perceptions. How would you and/or your organisation have handled these situations?

Just over three years ago my wife and I celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary. Leading up to the date it was necessary for me to be in Launceston, Tasmania on business. So I suggested to my wife that she fly over from Melbourne on the Friday evening and we spend a long weekend enjoying the delights of Tassie.

When I mentioned these plans to the hotel staff at the Launceston Country Club they went out of their way to help. In fact they upgraded me to a better room at a rate only a few dollars more than my company had been paying for my business stay. The service was exemplary and the next time I get the opportunity to travel to Launceston that is where I am planning to stay.

Unfortunately my wife and I didn’t enjoy the same sort of experience during our entire trip. I have to admit that we are both chocoholics, so we decided to hire a car and drive down to a well known chocolate factory in Hobart. After a pleasant 3 or 4 hour drive across the island and a stop for morning tea we finally arrived at the Cadbury factory a place we had visited many times before. We were looking forward to doing the tour again and buying a truck load of chocolate from the outlet shop to take home to our family.

After standing in the queue for a short while we reached the counter only to discover that advanced bookings were now required in order to complete the tour. “Aren’t there any exceptions” we enquired, “after all we have travelled from Melbourne to Tassie and then driven across the island for this?” The somewhat unsympathetic response was “No exceptions other than for overseas visitors, the rules are explained on our website”. “OK, our fault for not checking the website. Can we go into the outlet shop and buy some chocolate?” “No, you can’t go into the shop if you’re not going on the tour”.

Somewhat disappointed we decided to drive down to Coronation Dock in Hobart and enjoyed some absolutely fantastic Tasmanian seafood out of the paper before driving back to Launceston. Not a completely wasted day as there is no doubt that Tassie scallops are amongst the best in the world.

Cadbury do of course have the right not to offer tours of their factory and/or change the conditions relating to any tours. Having said that, do you think they could have handled the situation differently? If this was your company how would you have handled it? I should also point out that whilst Cadbury no longer do tours of their factory, I understand they conduct very good demonstrations in their visitor centre and my enquiries on the phone indicate there is no need to book.

I hope you find Customer Service Tips of value as you strive to deliver excellent customer service. If you think Customer Service Tips might be useful for any of your friends or colleagues I would very much appreciate if you would forward it onto them with your recommendation so that they can subscribe.

Warmest regards, Bill Ellerton

Company spotlight - AFEX

Associated Foreign Exchange (AFEX) has been offering clients an economical and efficient means of managing international payments since 1979. The company processes over one million transactions a month and over $20 billion a year. Operating under an Australian Financial services license all customer facing account executives are properly accredited.

AFEX believes that it is its customer service and consultative approach that gives it the edge over its competitors, who are of course in many cases the big banks. AFEX believes the same level of service that the big banks deliver primarily to large clients should also be available to small and medium enterprises.

In today’s global market place the effects of an unpredictable currency movement have never been more important. These market movements have now necessitated the need for any company involved in international business to have a strategy to both cope with currency movement risk and to harness these opportunities.

By working directly and consultatively with its clients AFEX is able to tailor a unique strategy for each client, as they know that each business has different needs and costings. A range of hedging and order types allow AFEX’s clients to take advantage of positive market movements and reduce the risk of negative movements, which ultimately delivers better results and a healthier bottom line for its clients.

This approach of listening to customer requirements and tailoring services to each customers needs demonstrates that even in a very competitive market like foreign exchange AFEX has been able to stand out from the crowd by being a truly customer focused organisation.

For more information about AFEX please visit www.afex.com or contact; Shaun Vanderkaap, Corporate Account Manager, svanderkaap@afex.com

Whatever happened to the Customer always being right?

Well, the reality is that the customer was never ‘always’ right even though they have a right to take their business elsewhere if they are not happy with your service. Most services professionals have run into people who as customers seem to believe that they are always right and who expect service providers and suppliers to act subserviently and do whatever they demand, not matter how unrealistic.

Dealing with customers who believe that they are always right can be very difficult if you want to keep their business.

Try to avoid getting into an “I’m right, you’re wrong” type of conversation. This creates winners and losers and even if you do win what effectively becomes an argument with the customer, you will invariably lose their future business.

A useful technique is to encourage customers to fully explain their point of view and to ask questions if you are unclear about any aspect of what they are saying. Avoid interrupting or trying to put your view before they have finished speaking. This demonstrates that you are listening to them and value what they have to say.

Only after you have given the customer the opportunity to explain their perspective should you try to work towards a resolution. Avoid the temptation of using confrontational language like, “that’s certainly not the case” or “I’m sorry, but you’re wrong”. Try to use empathetic language and propose a solution for example, “I can understand why you might feel that way, would it help if…” or “I appreciate what you have to say, could we think about….” Avoid using words like ‘but’ mid sentence. This sends a message that even if you do empathise anything before the ‘but’ doesn’t count. Not easy.

By telling customers that you understand or appreciate what they have to say, you are again demonstrating that you are prepared to listen to them and that you value them. By proposing possible solutions you are also demonstrating that you want to resolve the problem and retain their business.

The customer may not always be right, but remember that the customer is always the customer.

Meeting Customer Commitments

Regardless of the product, prodice or service being delivered to customers they have certain expectations about how they will be dealt with. When these expectations are not met customers invariably feel that they have received poor customer service.

The topic of customer expectation setting is a very complex one which many organisations fail to give adequate consideration to. Such organisations are then surprised when they receive poor customer satisfaction survey results. That is if they even bother to measure customer satisfaction.

Customers who buy a product based upon a set of specifications naturally expect that product to meet those specifications. The specification whether in written form or as described and possibly demonstrated by the salesman is a major part of what drives the customer expectation about the product.

Customers naturally anticipate that services which are provided in conjunction with a product, such as warranty, or services that they buy separately (prodices) will meet their expectations. Unfortunately there is often no formal “service specification” and many organisations simply leave it up to customer facing staff to just deal with the situation.

Mainstay can help organisations develop service specifications and to create or reset customer expectations. An important part of managing customer expectations is meeting customer commitments – at both the company and individual customer facing staff member level.

Giving a commitment may be just telling a customer that you will be at their home or office to complete some work on a given day. It may be just telling them that you’ll have a quote to them by the end of the week or as simple as indicating on the phone that their take-away food will be ready in 10 to 15 minutes. Perhaps we sometimes don’t even realize that we are not only giving commitments but setting a customer expectation.

Unfortunately circumstances, events and just everyday life can sometimes get in the way of us always keeping commitments. When this happens the professional and most customer centric approach is to call the customer, explain the circumstances and seek to reset the commitment. Perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch to say that bad news delivered early is good news, but it is certainly far better than bad news delivered late.

If a production manager has scheduled downtime of his plant for service activity on a weekend, would he prefer to know that it wasn’t possible to go ahead the week before or on the Friday afternoon as the factory had just come to a stop?

If a worker had scheduled a day off to be home for an air conditioner repair would they prefer to know that the parts hadn’t arrived at least the day before or just to find out because they had to call the service engineer to find out why he or she hadn’t turned up?

Making the call to tell a customer that you can’t meet the original commitment and seeking to reset it might be tough on some occasions. None the less it is the most professional thing to do and most customers would certainly prefer that you did this than leave them in the lurch.

Keeping customer commitments and resetting with customers when circumstances make it unavoidable helps to create trust and credibility, meet customer expectations and build a service profit chain.

And lets not forget that “My commitment is my word and my word is my honour”.

How easy are you to contact and do business with?

Don’t you just love some of those businesses that have replaced their switchboard operators or reception staff with automated response systems? Press 1 to listen the another range of menu options or 2 to go on hold for monotonous chimes or 3 to be told how much we value your call even though we can’t be bothered to answer the phone.

There is no doubt that if implemented properly some of these systems can and do provide real value to organisations and to their customers. Going through no more than 2 levels to talk to the right person can be much more efficient and quicker than waiting for a busy operator to direct your call. The real problem is that very few organisations take the time to implement these systems properly and then fewer still go to the trouble of testing them out from a customer’s perspective.

Despite the fact that we have had answering machines for decades now, there are still a large percentage of people who won’t “talk to a machine”. And of those people who do leave a message, many will go on to call other companies in the hope of talking to a real person about the product or service they wish to purchase. The reality is that you are far better off having a real person answer the phone whenever possible, even if all they can do to help the customer is to take a message and provide an assurance that someone will get back to them within a reasonable time.

Regardless of whether you work for a large firm with a customer unfriendly automated response system or a small company that diverts calls to answering machines or better to personal mobile phones, have you considered how easy or hard you are to contact.

We recommend that you test how easy you are to contact every six months or so. Or if you are a Service Manager or Supervisor working for a large service department perhaps test how easy it is to register or log a service request. Try doing it from a cooperative customer’s office or from a payphone. You might be surprised by the results.

We recently tried to contact a senior executive who we have worked with at a very large technology company. The operator didn’t know who the person was or how she could contact him, despite the fact he reports directly to the CEO of a multi billion dollar company.

There isn’t a business on this planet that doesn’t depend on customers and/or stakeholders being able to contact them one way or another. Clearly one of the most favored contact methods is by the phone, but there are of course many others including mail, e-mail, websites, text messages etc. How long does it take you and/or your company to respond to a customer enquiry by e-mail or through your website? Do you send an acknowledgement e-mail to at least reassure your customer that you have received their message? How easy are you to do business with?

One way to understand what your customers really experience when contacting you is through Mainstay’s tailored testing programs. Such customer experience tests can involve simple short checks via one or more contact channels through to detailed programs involving a full review of your service or customer management systems. In all cases you will receive a written report and recommendations as to how you might improve your customer’s experience.