Tuesday, April 7 2009
Valuing Your Customers
Startlingly accurate cartoon by Dave Walker
Customer service occupies a lot of my attention. I'm responsible for the answers we give to, and the solutions we provide for people who have concerns with our products. You know the saying, 'The Buck Stops Here'? Well, it usually stops antlers-first, and 'here' is my desk.
But I can't complain: for the most part our customers self-select for cheerfulness. Winemaking is a happy sort of leisure activity and by nature most folks are looking to enjoy themselves with it. It's not like back when I worked in a hardware store and people who came to see me already had a full head of steam with busted toilets or arcing light fixtures.
And at this stage I don't deal directly with as many consumers as I used to: I'm responsible for answering questions and giving programs and training to our Retail Partners, the people who own shops that sell our fine products. There are at least a thousand active retailers around the world, so If I only spoke to each one once a year that would mean five a day, roughly--imagine now that each of them has a thousand people on their customer list. I'd never get off the phone or email! I also do internal consulting to all stakeholders (a managementy word, that) and I'm the guy who has to–has to–answer the technical questions that come up about our products. It does keep me out of the pool hall.
Luckily for consumer winemakers out there I have minions who are bold and true: Linda and Joanne in our Customer Service department are jewels beyond price. With just a little coaching and a library of solid answers they work diligently to respond to the tide of email and phone inquiries about our kits and how to use them. Whenever they get stuck, or something is really esoteric ('What wine goes with Guinea pig?'*) they kick it over to me. I only ever have to answer once and from then on they take the bull by the teeth and all I have to do is stand back and wait for them to make me look good. Like I say, if they weren't there to shoulder most of the hard work, I'd hide under the covers, afraid to peek out.
And good answers and good resolutions are crucial to the success of Winexpert's business. If you've never tried making your own wine before, the big hurdles come down to three questions:
- Can you make your own wine?
- Is it hard?
- What if I don't like it?
It's the third one that's important. Of course you can make your own wine, and if you can hit the Cheerio's with the milk in the morning you have the complete skill-set necessary to make your first batch right away, but what if you don't like it? We guarantee that you will, 100% of the time. It's a pretty bold statement, 100% satisfaction, but we have to really live up to it, because if someone doesn't like the wine they made, it's not the batch of wine they're disappointed in. It's their time and effort, their feelings of accomplishment, and their aspirations for that wine: sharing with friends, ageing it to see how it improves, telling people how they made it, looking forward to pairing it with food, seeing a full rack of bottles . . . dissatisfaction with a batch takes that all away.
Now, this kind of warranty might seem to make the job of customer service redundant: give 'em a new kit and move on. But that's not how we roll. We work with consumers to find out why they didn't like the wine, what happened during the process, how we can correct it, and coach them to make a great wine they do like. Resolution only happens with solution, I always say, and making sure folks get a good wine every time is a reward that keeps on giving.
It's in this spirit that I analyse all of the customer service interactions that I go through on a daily basis. I almost feel obliged to coach staff when I see them falter or slack off–in the last ten years it's become an obsession. I now overtip good waitstaff, and talk freely to supervisors and managers about good and bad aspects of customer service. There's a certain restaurant that gave me a horribly bad dining experience that I feature in my talks about good customer service. They've now been held up as an example to at least three or four thousand people in my seminars. That'll teach them to treat me like I'm a contemptible idiot for complaining.Now, where was I? Ah, yes: anecdote-time.
I got a phone call from my cellular provider yesterday. The lady informed me that my account was due, and my phone service could be scheduled to be shut off as soon as week after next. Now, my payment was delayed, but it went through this morning. Imagine, I'm a customer for ten solid years, same phone number on what they consider a 'high-value account' (I use my phone in the US and internationally, from which they rake in lots of dough) and I've never missed or been late with a single payment before, but I get threatened by someone who sounds very strident. Not only that, but the representative talked over top of me and was not at all helpful.
Wow. Big miss for them. If there was anything resembling a free market for cell services in Canada I would have just flipped my account right at that moment. They totally failed to cover question three: what if I don't like what you've sold me? Because nobody sold me the phone or the minutes, they sold me cellular service–and I wasn't getting much service.
How many times have you had the same experience? When it seemed like nobody was listening to you, and you weren't getting what you were paying for, and the drone on the other end of the phone was working from a script that had nothing to do with your situation? When it became obvious that your concerns weren't their problem?
I was noodling around over at Wikinomics today, and found a link to some brilliant information from Get Satisfaction, a customer service site. They put forth the idea of a Maslow Hierarchy for customer Service.
Where's the little room with the mummy?
Woof, that'd be a great pyramid to be standing atop. It seems a lot of companies have issues just meeting expectations these days, so I'm taking away my phone-company frustrations as an excellent reminder and a cautionary tale: my concerns aren't the same thing as my customer's concerns, and it doesn't make for a good experience when people feel like you've scraped by on the bare minimum. I'd like to think we've figured out how to meet everyone's needs, but there's always more work to do. Good thing I've got good people all around me to work with on it.
Back to the jute-mill. As the man said, the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.
* Depends if the Guinea pig is grilled or roasted, and what kind of sauce it will be served with. I prefer a Pinot Noir or a Loire red (made from Cabernet Franc) with grilled, or a bold white (Pouilly Fuisse works well) with an oven roast.
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