Some gratuitous advice for customer service managers – 7 handy hints

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I make no apologies for the fact that this week’s post is something of a rant. But in venting my spleen I hope to offer some invaluable and sincere feedback to customer service managers everywhere.

Over recent weeks, I have had numerous phone conversations with front line customer service staff working for utilities, telcos and financial institutions. From my personal experience, these companies appear to be among the most frustrating companies to deal with, but my comments could equally apply to retailers, hotels, travel agents, software vendors, local governments or logistics companies.

Here are my suggestions on how customer service managers could improve their performance:

1. Train team members on the full product or service life-cycle – There is nothing worse than being passed off to a never-ending chain of “specialists”, people who know only their own few centimeters of the billing or fulfillment process (albeit their knowledge is probably several kilometers deep…). I am not saying they all have to be experts at everything, but having at least a common and consistent understanding of the end-to-end process would be a great start.

2. Update all team members on latest product and service changes on a timely basis – Following on from the above, I get really annoyed when given contradictory information from different client-facing employees, especially when the person I am speaking to is clearly not up-to-date with the company’s own offerings.

3. Tell the teams not to keep blaming the “system” – For one thing, the “system” is only as good as the humans who designed it. For another, the “system” is not some abstract or imaginary force over which nobody has any control. Often those designers are their colleagues. So in criticising the system for any shortcomings, the customer service representatives are in effect criticising their fellow employees and by extension, the company itself.

4. Listen to customer feedback relayed by the front line employees – For the most part, customers actually want to help service providers to do better. They don’t give their feedback so it can be ignored and disregarded – they would like it to be acknowledged, followed up and acted upon. No doubt most front-line employees would also like to think they are being taken seriously – but often I think there is an element of “shooting the messenger” which dissuades employees from raising genuine customer feedback and criticism with their managers.

5. Give customer service teams clear parameters to exercise their discretion – I understand that organizations require consistency, and they also expect adherence to operating guidelines and protocols. However, it gives me very little pleasure to have to go over the head of a front line employee to speak to a supervisor or team leader, who then ends up making their subordinate look ineffective because they have the “power” to reverse that erroneous charge on my bill. Rather than forcing customers to escalate issues in order to get attention from further up the chain of command, how about providing front line teams with more individual discretion as to how they can resolve customer complaints? I once heard of a major hotel chain that empowered front desk employees by granting them a program and quota of refunds, rewards, upgrades, discounts which they could allocate and award as they saw fit to address guest issues.

6. Learn to be more customer-centric, not product-led – So many service providers like to believe they focus on the customer. In fact, we know that customers are managed according to the products they purchase and the services they subscribe to. How often are internal systems jargon and inward-looking product terms used as a justification for a particular client outcome? To me, this demonstrates that many organizations are not interested in serving their customers – they are often rigidly organised around product processes and internal systems.

7. Don’t expect customers to train customer service staff (and certainly not for nothing) – Finally, we know that many organisations record in-bound customer calls. Sometimes, they bother to listen to the recordings. Occasionally, they might even contact the customer to seek more information. But rarely, if ever, do they contact their customers to say they listened, they heard and they did something about the issue. Sure, feel free to use my customer feedback for “staff training and coaching purposes”, but please give credit where credit is due. A voucher or a discount off my next bill would be a nice gesture!

While most retail markets are competitive, and customers have at least some choice between providers, the reality is that we all need access to gas, water, electricity, telecommunication and banking services. All of these sectors are highly regulated (and in some cases they also enjoy government protections), which by necessity reduces the amount of choice. Wouldn’t it be nice if these powerful and monopolistic companies used their enviable market position to benefit their customers, rather than taking them for granted?

10 Reasons why the Lean Startup Business Model is here to stay

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Is the Lean Startup Business Model a passing fad, or the “new normal”?

Here are 10 reasons why I think the Lean Startup model is here to stay:

1. Technology – Everything’s social, mobile and cloud-based, meaning reduced establishment costs, enhanced flexibility, and easier scalability for startups.
2. Millennials – The younger generation have different work drivers, informed by their lifestyle ambitions, career aspirations and personal expectations. Startups may often meet their needs more easily than established businesses, and can therefore attract talent better-suited to their requirements.
3. Everyone is their own CEO – “The Start-Up Of You” reinforced the idea that individuals are responsible for managing their own career, that they need to take control of their career decisions, and that a career does not always follow a continuously upward trajectory. Startups can allow people to make non-linear career moves.
4. Crowdsourcing – There’s no need to be an expert in everything – startups can outsource, collaborate, and rent rather than buy.
5. Crowdfunding – It’s no longer a pre-requisite to launch an IPO or negotiate an investment bank deal. The lean startup model has been key to the development of alternative funding models.
6. The waning fortunes of “big” corporates – With a few notable exceptions, large corporations can be slow to react to new market dynamics, and can miss out on new opportunities. The lean startup model is the antithesis to many traditional corporate ecosystems.
7. The post-industrial age – Before the industrial revolution and the arrival of factories, production lines and mass manufacturing, we had cottage industries – people working independently from home, in small-scale operations, often doing outsourced, piece-rate work, or bartering their skills. Startups are fostering a new era of cottage industries, where goods and services are traded through networks and peer-referrals.
8. Lessons from the dot.com boom & bust – We are wiser (after the event). Don’t assume the technology in itself is the solution or the product; don’t burn the cash and have nothing to show for it; start small but position to grow quickly through agile processes and nimble methodologies.
9. Flexibility is the key – Adapt and survive! This is the DNA of the Lean Startup Model.
10. Experience is sometimes better than a formal qualification – People are keen to learn and acquire new skills through direct exposure to interesting projects. Startups can offer this in abundance.

Acknowledgement: I am grateful to Brad Dunn of Nazori for triggering this blog.

Product Development 101: What we learned at Start-Up School

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Lean Model 001

Another large turn-out last Monday evening for Melbourne Lean Start-Up’s monthly event, hosted by Inspire9 and supported by SmartStartCity, Kussowski Brothers, Blue Chilli and AlphaStation.

This month’s theme was “Validated Learning – what to do before you launch your start-up” or as I like to call it, “Product Development 101”.

The evening kicked off with a lightning talk video presentation by Ash Maurya discussing his lean canvas 1-page business model. Well worth investigating before you even start writing a single line of code!

Next up, Tweaky offered some insights on the value of using PPC (Pay Per Click) pre-launch analysis targeting Search Intent (Google) and Demographic Intent (Facebook) to generate interest in your new product.

GetViable followed up with a discussion of the old-age conundrum for any new product or business: “Have you built a solution in search of a problem?” And even if you have correctly identified the problem, is it actually worth solving? The bottom line was, talk to your customers, listen and learn about their problems, then figure out whether they are willing to pay for your solution (and how much).

Then Flippa talked about the value of “observing your customers in the wild” – to gain insights and identify opportunities. Again, talking to and engaging with customers is critical to the product development process.

Finally, Envato presented some models and processes for collaborative design, essentially taking a look at user-centred design within a lean start-up context.

It’s very easy to lose sight of fundamental product development principles in any business start-up, especially for tech-based projects. But what each presenter stressed was the need to do your homework, to apply a coherent and sequential methodology to your new product development, and to adopt a continuous feedback loop to capture market insights and embed customer learning into the process.

To summarise, here is a tried-and-tested Product Development Cycle I have used for many years:

  • Idea
  • Market Research
  • Design Specification
  • Business Case
  • Build
  • Pre-sell
  • Production
  • Launch
  • Evaluation

Repeat ad infinitum.

Disclosure: The author does not have any connection to or commercial relationship with the presenters or sponsors mentioned in this blog. He did manage to grab a couple of free beers.

Publishing is Dead – Long Live Publishing!

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The name of this blog was inspired by a former colleague at The Thomson Corporation. As our team embarked on a major push into digital media in the mid-90s, he reminded us that the old publishing mantra “Content is King!” was being recast as “Content in Context”. Simply having loads of content was no longer enough to command a dominant or exclusive market position – publishers had to make sure their content was timely, relevant and easy to navigate. Ultimately, content has to help users find insights to their problems and solutions to their needs quickly and efficiently.

I was reminded of this recently when I heard some data storage experts talking about the challenges of what to do with all the data we are creating – especially at the rate we are going. According to latest analysis, 90% of all data was created in the last 2 years.

We keep being told that publishing is dead, but it is clear that we are producing more content than ever before – in which case, it’s great to be part of a dying industry! Sure, the business models are changing, and so is the technology; but there are still a number of core publishing disciplines that we risk losing sight of as we continue to develop boundless and limitless volumes of digital content.

There are several skills that publishers traditionally bring to any new content, print or on-line. And it’s not just about technology, SEO or the number of “Likes”. Any content owner seeking to engage vendors to develop their digital assets and manage their on-line presence would be well advised to ask potential suppliers about their experience, strengths and processes in each of the following areas:

  • Commissioning – having a nose for new authors, where to find them and how to nurture their talent
  • Editing – turning text and data into meaningful and coherent content, including length, structure, tone, clarity and access (tables of contents, indexing, cross-referencing, citations, footnotes, bibliographies, etc.)
  • Design – using appropriate formats, layout and fonts to suit the material and the readership
  • Customer Engagement – bringing the audience into the publishing process, through market research, pre-sales activity and user groups
  • Marketing – knowing how to distribute particular content or promote a particular writer
  • Content Management – analysing the usage data and capturing audience feedback, to understand the value of the publishing assets

Yes, these skills do exist in the digital realm, but increasingly the publishing process is being made subservient to the technology, often at the expense of meaning and comprehension. Doubtless this stems from the misconception that the speed and frequency of publication renders everything as mere ephemera – so why do we need to bother with such archaic ideas as an index?

An author acquaintance of mine recently lamented the response of his publishers who, when informed that his text-book needed an index before it could be distributed in schools, responded, “what a great idea – why don’t you send us one!” I can only assume that the publishers were so caught up in on-line media that they had forgotten how most readers navigate books or other content, especially when they are accessing them for the first time.

On-line developers do us a great disservice if they forget that digital content needs tools such as indexes and tables of content to aid user navigation and accessibility – text tagging and search functions are all very well, but they do not always return relevant or meaningful results, and they can create unintended or unforeseen linkages that may be completely out of context.

As a consequence of the exponential growth in on-line content, and our simultaneous interest for archive material (and the demand for data analytics), publishers are increasingly taking on a new and important role as curators – managing content assets, understanding how to present them, knowing the value of the material they are dealing with, and finding the right context in which to provide this content.

This shifting role of publishers is just confirmation that publishing is far from extinct.