Posts Tagged ‘Customer Service’

Customer Service – is it really that difficult?

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

I’m guessing that the time after Christmas is when more goods are returned as faulty or not wanted than at any other time of the year? Perhaps this is linked to a post I recently saw on a forum from a trainer asking about what they should train in relation to dealing with customers who complain – in short, should an apology be given or not.

My first thought was that this appears to highlight one of the key signs of an immature organisation when it comes to defining the training need. This question should be decided by the business – the operational management – not the trainer. It is a fundamental business decision as to how to respond to customer complaints. And it shouldn’t be too difficult.  But it appears that it is based on interactions I have had over the past couple of months.

My first experience related to going to buy – or trying to buy – a rail ticket at our local railway station. Knowing the ticket office closed at 7pm, I arrived at 6.45pm. As I walked towards the ticket office, I could see the person was serving another customer. As he saw me, he turned his sign around to read ‘Closed’. I wasn’t impressed. I went to see the Station Master to express my frustration. He said I must be wrong, and so went over to the ticket office. The man behind the counter said he was now closed, and the Station Master shrugged his shoulders at me and walked off.  Was he really the ‘Station Master’? Sir Topham Hat (aka The Fat Controller) wouldn’t have allowed such happenings on the island of Sodor.

I emailed Northern Rail with my concerns. The response explained that the Ticket Office, “ … is open until 1900 however because advance purchase tickets can be quite involved and can take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes per transaction we try and ask customers to come in before 18.45 if you are purchasing advance purchase tickets”. The respondent added their, “… sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused”.

20 minutes to buy a rail ticket! I’ve bought a few in my time, but they have never taken that long. Red rag to a bull.

I responded asking (1) where they publicise how they ask customers to come in before 18.45 and (2) their evidence for suggesting the average length of a ticket purchasing transaction.

The response I received was from the Customer Service Duty Manager this time – it had been an Officer on the first occasion. They didn’t answer either question directly, but said that they had to open to their advertised times and that on the day I visited the Ticket Officer was dealing with a particularly complicated ticket purchase to Swansea (a wonderful level of detail – remember to allow extra time the next time you buy a rail ticket to Swansea – or perhaps it could be anywhere in Wales … perhaps I should have clarified further, but I didn’t). I was also offered £30 for my inconvenience. Was the £30 for the inconvenience of my initial attempted purchase or for the inconvenience of highlighting the blatantly false information in the initial email?

My second experience relates to my son’s electric under-blanket. He is rather fond of this piece of electrical equipment. Only his iphone rates more highly, I suspect. When the under-blanket’s switch broke in late November (when it was particularly cold) he wasn’t too happy. Particularly as it was less than two years old (and with a three year guarantee). I emailed Morphy Richards explaining the issue, the fact it was within the guarantee period and asking what I needed to do to get a replacement switch.

The automated reply explained, “Your enquiry has been forwarded to a member of our Consumer Care Team. We are currently experiencing an extremely high volume of email enquiries and therefore the time taken for us to respond to your enquiry will be longer than usual”.

I didn’t receive any further word from them, and so I emailed them again 21 days later (perhaps they could reduce by 50% the amount of emails they receive by responding to the first email?). The content of the email was the same as the first, with one addition – I explained I would start proceedings in the Small Claims Court if I didn’t hear from them within the next seven days.

Two days later I received an email and a phone call.  Within the five-paragraph email, three were devoted to explaining the robustness of their engineering processes and apologising for the malfunction.  There was no reference to having ignored my first email. The purpose of the phone call was to tell me that a new blanket was being put in the post that day.

During the phone call I explained to my Customer Engagement Officer (CEO) that I accepted things unexpectedly break and that I didn’t have an issue with that. I thought it would have been more relevant to offer an apology for not responding to my initial email.   

And my third encounter was yesterday in Asda. I did a ‘quick shop’ for a few bits and pieces, and as I was leaving the store did a quick check of my till receipt. When I was a youngster, when my mum got back from doing the weekly shop at Fine Fare, she would check every item against the receipt – I don’t go to those lengths, but I do undertake quick checks!  Anyway, I noticed that I had been charged for six bags of clementines rather than the two I actually bought. I went to Customer Services, the person did a quick check of what I was claiming, gave me a refund, apologised for the mistake and then gave me a gift card loaded with £2 “for the inconvenience caused”.  

Customer Service should be an organisation’s strongest link as opposed to its weakest link. This is where reputations are built or broken. And it’s not that difficult, is it?   

So, Northen Rail, Morphy Richards or Asda – who reacted most positively and who underperformed? Who would you vote off?  

Paul

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Double Dutch tips

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

The final instalment of my Netherlands Trilogy starts at the Bistro Zilverzoen, in Elberg – and involves haggling with a waitress over a tip. After leaving the glares of Walibi World we went to find a nice restaurant for a birthday meal to celebrate my daughter’s birthday.  We came upon this restaurant by chance – but it was great.

It appeared very popular with the locals of the very picturesque and historic little town of Elberg, and it was nicely decorated. It felt homely. It transpired that it had a good menu and the fresh food was well prepared and enjoyable. The friendliness and helpfulness of the waitresses added to the ambience. For example, due to our command of the Dutch language amounting to a grand total of “Danka je vel” (thank you), one translated the entire menu into English for us. We also wanted a starter for three of us that was only available for 2 or 4 people – so they gave us a third portion free of charge. It was a lovely meal.

And so when it came to paying, I wanted to recognise this by giving a suitable tip. I worked out what 15% of the bill was and decided to add that on. Unfortunately, the credit card machine was all in Dutch, and so I asked the waitress to add the tip on to the machine. To my great surprise, she said that she couldn’t possibly add that amount on as it was far too much for the service that she had provided. She suggested an amount equivalent to about 3%. I protested! She wouldn’t budge. I suggested that we should barter, and I came down to 12%. I suggested that she move to 6%, to which she reluctantly agreed. I then used a few lines from the bartering scene from the Life of Brian – which were, I think, lost on her, but I enjoyed it. She eventually agreed to add 7%. I left a further 7% in cash.

The exchanges were all very pleasant and in good humour, but a waitress saying that the tip was too much was not something I had experienced before. Has it happened to you?

Peta, my wife, was particularly despondent at the interaction as she has been saying for the past 20 years that I’m not generous enough with my tips. Perhaps in future I should ask waiting staff how much they think I should tip them, and why (a little like a self-assessment appraisal!) prior to me making a final decision?

What was very pleasing about it was to see someone putting some thought into the value of the service they deliver. Some organisations have corporate objectives or visions related to customer satisfaction or providing the best service, when actually their objective is to make as much money as possible. Greed appears to be a significant aspect of our culture in Britain. This condition is  unfortunately as prevalent in L & D consultancy as much as it is – if not more so – in any other sector.

Here was a restaurant obviously wanting to make a profit, but to make a fair profit.  Very refreshing. Both society and business budgets would be healthier for such a mind set.

How do we get this to catch on?

Paul

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Playing with feeling and playing to learn

Monday, July 26th, 2010

In my last post I talked about the value that can be gained from affective learning methodologies, and the reluctance of some trainers to use such methodologies. One such methodology is the role play, and in this post I will give a brief run through on how to do it well.

Some role plays are very tightly scripted or structured – almost being the acting out of a scenario, or a simulation – and such activities are not intended to, nor are they likely to, achieve any affective based learning.

In order to create learning through the use of the Affective domain, the role play needs to be as unstructured as possible – and even then there is no guarantee it will achieve this. As the title suggests, it needs to involve ‘play’. We first learn to ‘play’ as children – and this generally takes place within very loose parameters, generates feelings and is one of the principle ways for children to develop their understanding of the world around them. Not unlike a good role play!

When I think back to learning events that I have really enjoyed delivering because of the intensity of the learning that has taken place, several involve unstructured or semi-structured role plays. When prepared, delivered and – most importantly – de-briefed effectively, they are an impactive way to improve interpersonal and decision making skills in a safe environment, generating long lasting learning.

Here are some key points to incorporate into your planning if you want to stand the best chance of creating an affective role play.

  • Be clear about why you are choosing the methodology – does it link in to your desired outcomes or objectives?
  • Role plays tend to be most impactive once the group is settled and relatively comfortable with each other.
  • Use volunteers – the more relaxed and willing the participants are, the more likely they are to ‘get into the role’.
  • Use written instructions so that the participants don’t know what the briefs are for each other.
  • Use names that can be for either gender – Sam or Pat for example – so that you can use whoever volunteers.
  • Where you are using an unstructured role, it is important to give the role a person’s name (i.e. Sam). This will make it clear to the person playing the role that their skills are not being assessed by those watching. In order to generate real feelings, they need to understand that they are not being asked to ‘perform’.
  • Give sufficient instructions so that the participants know how to get started, together with the licence to react as they feel fit as the role play unfolds – so you give them a ‘role’, and encourage them to ‘play’.

When might you use one? Well, one example could be in customer service training where you are wanting (1) delegates to be able to explain the potential effect on customers of a particular course of action and (2) to give feedback to a delegate on how he or she deals with a situation they may be faced with in the future.

Your briefing for the employee who will receive feedback on how they deal with a scenario could be that they are required to deal with a customer complaint in the role in which they are employed – in this instance as a Borough Council ‘front desk’ clerk.  The complainant’s brief could be that they are Sam and have neighbours who have had noisy parties for the last three weekends which have stopped Sam from sleeping. As a result Sam has spoken to the neighbour who has said that they will carry on having them, and so Sam wants the Council to address the matter before the weekend. Sam can react as he or she sees fit dependent upon how Sam is dealt with by the clerk.

Having run the role play to its natural conclusion you come to the all important de-brief. Important because you may have generated feelings in individuals and as the instigator (and trainer) you have a responsibility to discuss and give meaning to these. Important because this is where the learning is for all who are present. This is the order in which I would de-brief the scenario – and the order is important for the benefit of all those involved.

  1. Go to ‘Sam’ and ask them what they are feeling / what emotions they have.
  2. Go to Council employee (using real name) and ask the same
  3. Ask if the role play has generated any feelings for the rest of the group, and if so what feelings.
  4. Go to ‘Sam’, and this time using his / her real name, ask why Sam had the feelings described in point 1. Explore what created each of those feelings. (The name change is important here as it starts to take the person out of role).
  5. Using their own names, ask the same questions of the Council clerk and any others from the group.
  6. Points 4 & 5 above have enabled you to extract the affective learning and enabled you to debrief those involved.
  7. You can then debrief the rest of the role play in a similar way to how you might have done if you had used as a case exercise or case study as your methodology. If there are no feelings generated, you would again de-brief in a similar way to a case exercise.  
  8. Ensure the group has taken all the learning from the scenario.

That’s my 5 minute guide to running and de-briefing a role play with the intention of incorporating the Affective domain of learning. Did it make sense? If not, or you need more information, please get in touch.

Paul

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Banking on objectivity

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

I’ve just had a request this morning from a bank in Cambodia for a copy of a Learning and Development Quality Management System. It reminded me of a recent encounter I had with a more local bank.

I recently discovered that a cheque I had paid into the Bank had not registered on the account. It had been a couple of weeks since I posted it through the bank’s letterbox and I was starting to wonder where it had got to. I had used the letterbox as the cash machine on the side of the building was not accepting deposits. I thought a visit to the Bank was in order.

I explained the circumstances to one of the staff and I answered all her questions. Yes, I was sure it was this Branch. Yes, I had used the correct account number. Yes, I had definitely delivered it. No, I didn’t have any other bank accounts with them that I could have put it into. Yes, it was definitely this Bank I had posted it at and not a different one.

A slightly awkward silence followed. “I’m sorry Mr Ackerley, I don’t know what has happened to your cheque, but we definitely haven’t got it”, was the comment that broke the silence. I felt my frustration levels rising. This was obviously the end of the road with this person. I asked to speak with a manager. “I don’t think a manager will be able to do any more than I have done”. I reiterated my desire to speak with a manager, and in due course one arrived. We revisited all the questions that I had answered with the first assistant – perhaps unsurprisingly, the answers were the same. And the conclusion was the same – “I’m sorry, I don’t know where your cheque can be”.

“Okay”, I said, “I say I posted it through your letterbox and you say you haven’t received it. Let’s go back to the last point I know where it was – your letterbox. Please can you check the letterbox to ensure it hasn’t got stuck anywhere”. I was assured that this couldn’t have happened as there was nowhere in the box for it to get stuck. I was insistent. The manager reluctantly agreed. About five minutes later the manager returned with a sheepish look on his face and a huge pile of mail. “I must apologise”, he sighed, “It looks like nobody has emptied it for about 3 weeks”. And, yes, my cheque was in there.

The interaction highlighted the value of focussing on the process rather than assumptions. If either of the staff members had focussed on the process – the route the cheque had taken – they would have approached the situation more objectively and looked in the letterbox, but they chose to focus on the assumption that the customer didn’t know what he was doing (sometimes the case, I will admit, but not on this occasion!).

Would you notice if you hadn’t received any post for three weeks? I would. It made me realise that in some sectors mail doesn’t have much of a role any longer. I remember as a child my dad stopping the car and pointing out a house with no chimney – a real rarity. Perhaps in 10 years time we will be pointing out buildings with no letterboxes.

Pleasingly, the manager was very apologetic – unlike the assistant who appeared to disappear into the woodwork as the manager returned with the mail. Perhaps because they were embarrassed, or it was their job to empty the letterbox, or they would have to go through all the mail – or perhaps some other reason.  But when a mistake has been made, admit it. He did that, and we had a laugh about it and moved on. If he hadn’t, I would have formally complained or changed banks.

And from a training perspective, what a great scenario for a role play for customer service training! Better than anything I could have made up – but the real experiences always are.

Paul

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