Customer Service

Recently I was sitting with a client (a large comms agency) listening to one of their client service leaders talking about building strong customer relationships and the importance of gaining feedback. The term used was “fearless listening”, the idea that you should not be afraid to ask for feedback in case you think it will be bad. The opposite to burying your head in the sand if you will.

We’ve been encouraging our clients to ask for feedback for as long as we can remember too. In fact we run regular customer satisfaction surveys for one of our longest standing clients. This allows us to track changes in performance, identify trends and highlight any areas where the client needs to raise its game. In the last four years this process alone has helped to improve customer satisfaction significantly.

With this in mind we decided it was high time we conducted some fearless listening ourselves and have begun surveying our customers. It’s been an eye opening experience so far with a huge amount of positives identified, along with one or two areas where we can improve. We have been delighted our Net Promoter Scores that’s for sure.

If you aren’t already asking your customers for feedback, start now. It doesn’t need to be a great big survey, it can be as simple as asking the question ‘are you happy with the service we’re providing?’ The important thing is to start collecting feedback, recording your customers views – both positive and negative – and making sure you take action on any of the areas for improvement. You will be surprised how this can focus your mind on the customer, which after all is what marketing is all about.

There’s one thing about clients that’s difficult not to love and that’s a client that brings you more clients. Those people you have impressed so much, they’re happy to go out and do your advertising and selling for you. I’ve worked with some companies that secure half of their new business through clients like this, their advocates. As you can imagine their marketing budgets are low.

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It goes without saying that email is one of the most popular customer communication and marketing channels at the moment. Even with the explosion in social media, email is still without a doubt a very important and impactful channel for b2c and b2b marketers.

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On a recent business trip to Dusseldorf I had the pleasure of flying with British Airways. I say the pleasure, because the flight was quick, painless and the service if nothing else was rapid. However, I have to also comment on the experience off the airplane to give you the rounded picture. For anyone following the UK news, you’ll now that last week two things of interest happened at London Heathrow:

1. a lunatic ran on to one of the runways carrying a suitcase which he left on the runway

2. the Queen officially opened the brand new Terminal 5 building

So what you might ask has this got to do with British Airways and customer service?

First of all both occurrences delayed my flight – on the outbound and inbound journey. To be fair, I can’t really complain about this what so ever, BA after all had no control over the lunatic running onto the airport which resulted in additional security for Her Majesty’s visit the following day.

However, what I can complain about is the complete lack of information from BA. While waiting at Heathrow for over two hours all I was told by the information desk was to have patience. When I enquired in the BA lounge at Heathrow, they actually had a little more information, but not much. On the return journey, it was the same story – no information at all from the staff at the gate, even though we were kept waiting for about an hour.

All this got me to thinking about how negative I was feeling towards BA.

Not knowing why there were delays I naturally assumed it was the airline’s fault, particularly as they were unwilling to talk about it. Has this done some damage to BA’s brand, yes quite possibly. I shared my experience with my colleagues in Dusseldorf (several others of whom got caught in the delays also) and of course I’m writing about it now. Will I fly with BA again? Probably, but not until I’ve checked out the alternatives. Strange isn’t it, after all, BA are not to blame at all. It was just a lack of communications that left me feeling disappointed.

What’s the lesson then. I think it is clearly that when things are going a little pear shaped, keep the customer informed. Whether that’s a announcement at an airport, a phone call, or a quick email. All of these small steps will help to keep the customer informed and a little happier. We all know that happiness has a direct correlation with repeat business and making recommendations to friends, family and other potential customers.

For more ideas on customer communications, visit the excellent return customer blog from Joe Rawlinson. Joe talks a lot about keeping customers properly informed, whether that’s to reinforce negativity in the sales process, or simply getting the basics right in answering the phones.

Don’t forget, keep communicating with your customers!

I‘m not often one to sing Google’s praises, but credit where credit’s due in my opinion and they do seem to be smartening up their act with the AdWords support programme. Perhaps this is in response to Microsoft adCentre’s excellent telephone support line.

Well anyway, just a short post to say well done Google. The recent problems I’ve been experiencing with My Client Centre and Analytics are being handled by a very polite and responsive lady by the name of Niamh (pronounced Neve for those non-Gaelic readers). I will let you all know how quickly the problem is resolved, but for now I’m happy in the assurances that Niamh is on the case.

A recent article in the UK’s weekly ‘Marketing’ journal discusses how big businesses are changing their approach to measuring customer loyalty. T-Mobile, American Express, General Electric, Allianz and more, are increasingly measuring customer loyalty using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) from management consultancy Bain & Co. Put simply, the NPS identifies the percentage of customers that are likely to recommend a brand or company and uses this as a predictor for future growth.

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Did you know it’s seven times more expensive to sell to new rather than to existing customers? I’m not sure where that figure comes from, whether market research or guestimate, but it’s an interesting figure none the less. With that number in mind, surely you want to be doing everything you can to keep your customers happy and where possible increase their expenditure. Right?

Well how do you go about doing that?

First of all and crucially, you need to supply a quality product or service that consistently meets your customers needs in the first place. It’s obvious that if you don’t it will be an even harder sell.

But once you’re doing this, how can you keep your customers happy and keep them buying? As with all good sales, there’s a huge degree of listening involved. It’s a well known fact that the best salesman are good listeners as well as good talkers.

Take the time to ask you customers how they are enjoying your product. Ask what they like and dislike, whether there are other products you could sell to them, whether they would prefer you to call twice a month rather than every week, if your product meet their needs or could it be improved?

What you want to know is, are you providing what they want, when they want it, in the way they like it. If not, what could you be doing better. Remember, good salesman are good listeners.

This doesn’t have to be an expensive process. You could issue an annual survey, check out www.surveymonkey.com for a free online survey tool. Or you could conduct a telephone research process with your 50 best customers. Alternatively you could implement an after sales service system such that your sales managers call all customers after a month and conduct a quick telephone interview. If you have lots of money you could even carry out focus groups to measure peoples experience of your product.

There are lots of methods available for listening to your customers. The important thing is that you do. Remember, it’s seven times more expensive to sell to a new customer than an existing customer, so do what you can to keep hold of them.

Image courtesy of Andrew*

In an attempt to improve its customer service, internet company Easynet recently surveyed its customers to find out what they actually wanted from their business relationship. The conclusions drawn are very interesting and useful if you run a business to businesses operation. Easynet’s focus was on receiving good service as a customer, but to my mind, the ten ideas they highlighted could just as easily be used to improve service delivery.

You can read the full report at Easynet but below I’ve summarised some ideas for how you could use these tips to improve your own service delivery:

1. Know what your customers want – ensure you know what your customers objectives are before trying to sell a service. You can’t deliver an excellent product if you don’t fully understand why the customer is making the purchase. A good example is when you buy a mobile phone, the retailer always asks you about how you use your phone before trying to sell you a call plan – this way the product choice will better match your needs. The result, you’ll be happier with your purchase.

2. Choose carefully – if you are fortunate enough to be selective over your clients, then make sure you choose carefully. Think about whether you can deliver a quality product, but also factors such as can they actually afford to pay? When delivering your service, do you need to work with partners or contractors? If so how can you ensure they provide the service level you expect for your clients? Choose partners carefully.

3. Ask for and enforce a Service Level Agreement (SLA) – negotiate your SLA carefully with clients and don’t overestimate what you will actually be able to deliver. Always expect your clients to enforce the agreement, even if you think on a personal level they will not. For example, many PR agencies may be measured and paid on a performance by results basis, but the results target has to be fair to both client and agency.

4. Hold regular reviews – ensure you report to your client regularly on progress. If things are going badly, it’s better to identify this early and work out a solution with your customer, rather than burying your head in the sand. If you are performing better than expected, it doesn’t hurt to ensure the client is aware of this.

5. Integrate the supplier into your company - as a service provider I have often found myself kept at arms length from my client and unable to really get under their skin. I can always provide a more valuable service when I have a good feel for the culture and a good understanding of how the company works. With that in mind, I try to imbed myself as much as possible with my clients. Can you do the same? If you offer accountancy advice, would you benefit from visiting your clients premises ad getting to know some of the key staff?

6. Get involved - if you can allow your customers to participate in the service delivery, then they’ll better understand what they’re getting and how it adds value. For example, if you are an architects practice, can you involve your client more in the design process? If the client adds more to the design stage, can you demonstrate how their decisions impact service delivery?

7. Do unto others as you would do unto yourself – a no brainer really.

8. Be realistic – again another no brainer. Don’t over promise and under deliver, after all would you be happy with that? What is in your SLA?

9. Feedback and feedback again – this fits well with the regular reviews in point 4. If you are struggling to provide what your customer has asked for then let them know. But also feedback to your client if their performance is impacting your ability to provide a good service. For example if you’re a PR agency, you will need good information from your client to provide an effective service. How often do you get this?

10. Learn a language - this point is about the benefit of learning a few words of your customers local language. But it could just as easily apply to corporate terminology and industry jargon. The more you know about your customers and their industry, the better you will become at providing an effective service.

Overall an excellent and extremely useful report and I congratulate Easynet on taking such a proactive approach to delivering good customer service. One of the highlights of the report to me is this quote “It was clear that the key to success is to develop an open, honest business relationship” with business partners.” I agree entirely, be open, be honest and most importantly be clear in your communications and relationships.