The Cancellation Department
December 15, 2009
Technology can be extremely useful when it works. But even when it works well, poor customer service and technical support can make matters extremely difficult.
My cell phone is a both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I travel extensively and it allows me to keep in touch with my office, my clients, and my family. It’s a curse, because inconsistent service, incorrect information, and regular billing errors have caused me to spend about each month on the phone with their customer service department.
Those of you who have attended my programs know which company I use, although I have heard very similar stories from customers of virtually every carrier.
Last month, I was trying to correct a $600 overcharge on my bill. It was fairly late, maybe 10:30 pm when I tried to contact a customer service representative. Fed up with spending ten minutes trying to navigate their “automated assistant,” I hit a random sequence of keys to confuse the system and get routed to an actual person. In a few seconds, I was on the phone with a customer service representative.
But not just any person, I got “Dave,” who was by far the most competent employee of this particular company I had ever spoken with.
He corrected the problem with the bill and explained why the problem had happened. He told me about an issue they were having that made it impossible to accurately post my usage to the web site so that I could manage my minutes. He made a note to follow up with me in a few weeks to make sure everything was working correctly.
Oh yeah, he also recommended a different plan that offered me more minutes at a lower cost than I was paying. I thought I had died and gone to “Customer Service Heaven,” which anyone who knows me will tell you is high praise indeed!
I asked Dave how I was lucky enough to have him as my customer service representative and his answer was quite interesting. ”I don’t work in Customer Service,” he explained, “I work in the Cancellation Department. When people decide to cancel their service, they are sent to me and I do whatever is necessary to keep them with us.”
Now clearly, they had the right person in that job, but I couldn’t help but think that if they had competent people like this answering the phones in the first place, they wouldn’t even need a Cancellation Department!
Study after study has shown that it is more costly to get a new customer than it is to keep the customer you already have. Keep this in mind and be certain that you give the best possible service you can when it really counts – at the moment the problem arises.
Pizza Anyone?
December 8, 2009
Some companies sell products that are so special and unique that they almost sell themselves. Other companies sell commodity items that are so commonplace as to be practically boring.
Pizza could be classified as one of these. Large pizza chains use a variety of advertising and marketing campaigns to distinguish themselves from the pack. Dominoes had a guaranteed delivery time. Little Caesar’s offered two pizzas for the price of one. Papa John’s claims that better ingredients make a better pizza.
Does this kind of branding help sell more pizzas? It’s kind of hard to answer that question definitively since there are many other factors that affect gross sales.
A client of ours told us about a small pizza shop in Holidaysburg, PA, that has a unique approach that has shown measurable success.
Once a week they show up at my client’s building at lunchtime with ten pizzas. Nobody ordered these pizzas; they just bring them. When word gets out throughout the building that there are pizzas for sale in the lobby, they are all sold. All ten pizzas. Every week.
I don’t know this for fact, but I would bet money that they do this on different days for different offices in the area.
They demonstrate extremely well that you can’t just wait for business to come to you, sometimes you have to go out and stir things up a bit. Their creative method for creating demand – bringing hot fresh pizzas into a building of hungry employees at lunchtime – yields measurable results, week after week.
Look at your own organization. Are there ways you could be creating demand for your products or services by making them more available to potential customers?
Sorry, You Can’t Get the Discount
October 15, 2009
It’s good to encourage people to take action, but sometimes balance is important too. Back in July, our daughter had her tonsils out. And in case you’re conjuring up images of an adorable little child eating popsicles for a few days and then heading on back to kindergarten, let me clear this up for you quickly: our daughter is 18 years old, not five.
And let me assure you, a tonsillectemy is a much different experience when you’re 18. For starters, the pain level is much more intense, even more so when the patient has a low threshold of pain to begin with. Basically, two weeks of torture for everyone involved.
But she came through with flying colors, and the procedure was a success on all counts. I only wish I could say the same for the billing procedures of the surgery center.
Of course, our health insurance covered most of the costs for the ENT doctor, the anesthesiologist, and the day-surgery center, but, as usually is the case these days, we did have co-pays and deductibles to deal with.
We received the bill from the surgery center in September. (Apparently, it takes two months to get everything cleared through the insurance company – a separate problem all its own.) We put it in our stack of bills to be paid at the beginning of October, paid it as scheduled by check, and didn’t think about it again.
That is, until we got a second letter from the surgery center, informing us that if they received payment by October 15, they would give us a 20% early-payment discount. Mind you, they didn’t mention this in the original bill, nor was there any indication that you could pay by credit card, which, apparently, is allowed.
Thinking that this would be simple matter, Lorie called, explained how she had sent in the check, confirmed that they would have it by the 15th, and asked them to send us a check for the 20% early-payment amount.
No, they explained, they couldn’t do that. I won’t bore you with the complete details since you’ve almost certainly experienced the kind of bureaucratic incompetence that causes “customer service representatives” to adhere blindly to processes when pure common sense would dictate a different course of action.
Suffice it to say that Lorie held fast, spoke to not one, but two supervisors, and finally got it resolved. Not, by the way, that they would send us a check for the 20%, but that they would return the original check, and we would then resubmit the amount less the 20% payment, creating more work for both us and them!
I know, it didn’t make much sense to me either, but that’s kind of the point of this entire article: processes are good things. They make it easy to provide consistent service. They give you a starting point for improving procedures. But when the rules and guidelines people follow make things complicated for their customers or members, then it’s time to take another tack.
As difficult as it was to see our daughter suffer through the original recovery process, dealing with these people was almost as painful. Make sure you don’t do the same thing to your customers.
Check Your Bill…
April 17, 2009
I know a lot of businesses are struggling right now. Some may be tempted to “start bending the rules” just a bit, violating my own personal guidelines of not doing anything in my business that’s illegal, immoral, or unethical. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but recently it’s become more and more difficult. Let me explain…
It was spring break from high school last week, so my wife and daughter went up to New York for a “girls-only” trip to visit family. We had booked a car for her to pick up at the Albany airport for four days for a total of $101.65. Not bad – a little over $25/day for a car.
But when they arrived at the counter, the agent handed Lorie a contract indicating a total price of over $240.00. Without missing a beat, she stood up ramrod straight, and said in an almost defiant voice, “Uh uh – that’s not even close!” She then produced the printout of the confirmation showing the correct amount, at which time the agent apologized and said that he didn’t see the discount code in the record when he printed the contract.
Okay, innocent mistake #1.
While they were enjoying the beautiful “mid-30s and sleet” weather of upstate New York, a similar situation was unfolding down in “sunny and mid-70s” North Carolina…
When I had broken my foot last year and wanted to get back running as quickly as possible, the doctor had recommended a “bone-growth stimulator” – a device that uses ultrasound waves to speed up the healing process. But when we checked with the insurance company to see if it was covered, we found out that we’d be on the hook for about $1,200 in deductibles and co-pays. I told them, “thanks but no thanks,” I’ll just take my chances with the normal healing process.
The manufacturer of the device then called us to say that if I wanted to use the device, it would be covered at 100%. Well, this was good news. Just to be sure, I confirmed – about five different times – that we wouldn’t have to pay even one dime for the machine, and the person on the phone confirmed this.
So you can imagine my surprise when I received a bill from the manufacturer for $741.53, While leaving several messages with both the manufacturer and my doctor, I continued to receive bills, each with more urgency (and an increasingly threatening tone) – three bills, to be precise.
When I finally got through to them, they apologized and said it was an error. The next day, they called me back from the doctor’s office and said the manufacturer had some rule where they had to bill the patient three times before they could write off the balance.
Innocent mistake #2. Or was it?
You see, no one told me about the “three bills and you’re out” policy. Had we not been paying attention, or if it hadn’t been for such a large amount, it might just have slipped into the “bill pay” pile and gotten paid – for an amount we weren’t even supposed to be charged!
And had Lorie not been alert and attentive at the rental counter, she would have been on the hook for more than double the correct amount for the car.
There’s an old expression that says, “If one person calls you a horse, you figure he’s a fool, and send him on his way. If two people call you a horse, you assume they’ve been drinking, and laugh it off. If three people call you a horse…buy a saddle!”
In just the last week, we’ve had the equivalent experience of “two people calling us a horse.” When it happens a third time, I’m going to assume these situations – and others like it – are being done deliberately to try and squeak out some additional revenue.
The bottom line for you: assume nothing – double check everything. It’s probably just an innocent mistake, but you never know…
“Try Sports”
April 12, 2009
If you’re planning on climbing Mt. Everest, you’d make absolutely certain that you have the right training, conditioning, and equipment – to do otherwise would be foolish…and dangerous.
Oh, don’t worry, Mt. Everest is not in my immediate or future plans – I don’t have the time or the inclination to attempt anything like that. But a half marathon is exactly the kind of physical and mental challenge I enjoy (more on that in this week’s Tales from the Road article below…) and the selection of equipment is important here as well.
The list of required items is fairly short: running shoes.
Sure, you can get special running socks, heart-rate monitors, and wicking shirts; but really, the only essential item you may not already own is a good pair of running shoes.
Normally, when you walk into a sporting-goods store, the clerk will ask what size shoe you wear, maybe inquire briefly about the type of running you do and your average weekly mileage, and then disappear into the back to see what shoes are available in your size. She’ll then leave you with several brands to try on, before moving to the next customer.
While this may be efficient, it doesn’t always result in the best possible selection – and running with the wrong shoe can lead to several different injuries that can essentially sideline you for weeks, or possibly months. But it does allow for slightly lower prices – I mean, it is a commodity item, right?
There is another approach, and a company called TrySports has it nailed down perfectly. Their four stores in North and South Carolina focus on people who run triathlons, or participate in any of the three component events: swimming, biking, and running. Let’s ignore the brilliant niche marketing that went into even identifying the need for this type of business, and focus on something even more specific: their process for fitting running shoes.
In stark contrast to the example I gave above, TrySports has a unique five-step process they go through to help you select the right shoe based on the size and shape of your foot, the way you train, and your running style. They even have a name for this fitting process: “5 Steps to the Perfect Fit” – an important thing to do to distinguish yourself from the competition.
One of the steps is a “Video Gait Analysis” where a digital video camera, aligned perfectly to videotape your stride as you run on the treadmill, lets the staff analyze exactly how your foot is striking the ground – particularly helpful if the customer tends to pronate or supinate (striking with the outside or inside of the foot).
And if, despite all of these steps, the shoes don’t work out, they’ll exchange them for a different model – even if you’ve run with them on the pavement, because that’s the only real way to know if they’re right for you.
So you see, they’re not selling running shoes, they’re selling the experience of making sure you have the perfect shoes that will help you enjoy your running, and do it without injury. And, by the way, if the shoes cost a bit more than at the discount stores, no one seems to care – the store was quite busy when I went there a few weeks ago to buy a pair for myself.
Do you have a unique process for what you do? Can it help you distinguish yourself from the competition? Can it put you in a position where you can charge a premium price for your products or services? Find a way to do this, and you’ll leave everyone else in the dust.
One of Our Best Customers
March 4, 2009
I got a message a while ago from someone named “Dave” who wanted to talk to me about “an important marketing opportunity.” Not having any information, but being interested in marketing, I called the number he had left for me.
When the phone was answered, and I explained why I was calling, there was a brief pause while the person on the phone had to go off and find out exactly who Dave was. A few minutes later (at this point, they had piqued my curiosity) Dave finally arrived on the call.
He had called me about a marketing conference – a “boot camp” type event featuring three well known marketing people, including Adam Ginsberg, who teaches people how to make money using eBay. Always curious as to how people select and target their mailing lists, I asked how they got my name in the first place.
At first, he didn’t know, and then, after further digging, he said triumphantly, “Oh, here it is: Adam Gisnberg says you’re one of his best students.”
Wow – what an honor! Except for one simple fact: I’m not one of his best students. In fact, I’m not one of his worst students: I’m not even a student of his at all. I’ve never bought so much as a book from him. The closest I’ve ever come to any involvement with Adam Ginsberg is the time he spoke at one of the major marketing conferences I attend each year.
Turns out, I had reached a call center where people were working fervently to fill seats at an upcoming event. There were many ways they could have gotten my name, any of which would have made me a likely candidate. But the minute they couldn’t explain how they selected me – and got their only attempt at it dead wrong – I lost all interest in attending the conference…and in continuing the conversation.
Affinity is important: teachers selling to other teachers; stay-at-home moms selling to other stay-at-home moms; entrepreneurs selling to other entrepreneurs all have better results because of the common background, language, and experience they share with each other.
But you have to get it right. You can’t send a letter to a list of vegetarians that starts out: “Just like you, nothing brings a smile to my face like a big, juicy sirloin steak…” And that’s essentially what they did.
It doesn’t take much effort to select qualified lead sources, segment your own “house list,” and customize the message you send to specific market segments. Best of all, the effort you put into this process will almost always lead to improved response and increased revenue.
