The word “Sorry” is sometimes used, although this tends to be in standard templates and scripts. I am not a lawyer, however I suspect there is difference between saying sorry and accepting blame.

This came up recently as I read an apology letter from Waitrose (high-end UK supermarket) that contained the following interesting mixture of text:

“I have investigated this matter and would like to assure you that it has been taken up with the Partners concerned. I am very sorry that we have failed to provide you with the quality of service you expect from Waitrose.”

I think following points are interesting:

1. Shifting the ultimate blame to “Partners”. I guess its capitalized to make it clear that’s someone else.
2. Presumably the “we” is Waitrose and their Partners … although I suspect the same word would mean Waitrose alone as well.
3. It seems the issue is closed in the “has been taken up”, presumably passing the complaint over. I probably don’t want more follow up personally, but might like some kind of assurance it will not happen again.

I must say the letter was signed in ink by a human (not a scanned signature graphic) and they also included some vouchers to appease me. So whilst this leaves me fairly happy, there were no “partners” visibly involved from my end and the lack of fully accepting blame might be factually legitimate however I don’t really care how they outsource internal tasks.

I propose companies to swallow their pride and accept blame upfront (irrespective of the consequences), with statements like “… we made [XYZ] mistakes here…” – as it will allow everyone to move on towards a solution.

As Institute of Customer Service accredited member and advocate, past Customer Service Rep, and currently a designer of customer service tools and solutions, I have some insider tricks to help make consumer customer service a positive experience.

Getting To Solutions Faster

• Provide a potted history, facts, impacts to you, costs in money/frustration/upset, and estimate wasted time. Be clear on what your expectations were and the reasons for them. Similarly, if things are especially complicated and multiple departments are likely to be involved, ask the service rep to make clear notes on the case record and get them to read them back to you to make sure they’re right
• Be clear you’re determined to get this sorted out. Do not threaten but try to make it clear that you will not go quietly, and you’ll make sure you share the experience. I even half-jokingly say “here is a challenge for you to prove how good your companies customer service can be”.
• Log all your efforts (problems, calls etc), a factual record with peoples names, places, dates/times is very useful and powerful. Don’t make it up either, lies are easy to detect in your voice and once you loose credibility you might as well give up.
• Find and use real examples of similar issues and explain how they have what you want or expect. Think about experiences of relations, friends, or even from news stories. Make the similarities clear. Ideally find ones that involve competitors and subtlety state it as a challenge and opportunity to compete.
• Establish a personal relationship with the service rep, get them personally involved so they care and go the extra mile. Ask their personal advice – what would they do – and ask them if the understand your expectations and empathize. Get the benefit of their experience. If you keep them onside they’re more likely to make an extra effort.
• If you’re getting nowhere, use escalation requests (ask to speak with a manager) but be clear why and what you hope it will do, such as answer why something cannot be done or speed thing up.
• Use social media as well, post on their and your Facebook pages and direct message their twitter account. These are so sensitive areas that they’re often staffed with the best people who have more power to sort things out quickly. Sometimes they’ll only be marketing wonks and just palm you off to customer services dept. Do what they suggest (if you haven’t already), but if solution still remains elusive go back to the same social media accounts to follow up and give case numbers etc. Be persistent and consider extend to writing blog posts on the problem and sharing these as well. Start gradually however often the more noise you make the more attention you’ll get.

Getting Some Compensation

• Be fairly clear on what you want to make you happy again, although it’s not always sensible to be too abrupt and say “I want some free vouchers as compensation”. Just make it clear that your experience has put you off using the company again, how competitor seem more attractive, and they need to remedy the ill feeling and do something to restore your faith in using them again.
• And be realistic, don’t push beyond what seems fair compensation based on the extent of the experience. Consider alternatives to refunds or money, such as supporting services and peripheral products.

One last word, help make customer service reps job easy, put yourself in their shoes and try encourage some collaboration together to make things as easy as possible for everyone. Help Them To Help Yourself.

The raw data is there, in troubleshooting tickets, emails, and whenever you hear “this call maybe recorded for quality control”, however mining it for insight remains largely an arduous manual task, or left to spotty and annoying surveys.

So in theory it’s possible to scan “Big Data” like this for specific patterns in request-response exchanges, however it’s the subtle and variable aspects of human interaction that still kills the effectiveness, consistency, and reliability. Ongoing progress in machine learning should turn this around, replacing the brute force keyword-type scans with intelligent interpretation that allows the system to decipher facts.

There is also another challenge right now – upfront cost.  Since service delivery is often considered a “cost-center” it is hard to make large investments in such development projects without solid evidence-based proof that the results will lead to a real return. Now, if-and-when a software organization builds a system that does this well, those upfront costs are reduced to licensing and maintenance, a much lower barrier to entry.

So my hope is that as Apple Inc has demonstrated with Siri, technology companies are starting to build the technology to understand the subtleties of human interactions, and so the complex analysis of human experiences, like service calls, isn’t far away now.

For those keen to climb the corporate ladder, win new customers, and score the big bonus, the elements of game playing and competition are right there. Even those wishing to standout just enough to keep their jobs have to win the praise of management to achieve a a good performance appraisal score.

So I think gamification really just offers the icing on the cake, such as:

• Better visibility into relative performance
• More opportunities to compete
• An engaging process and tool-set for competing
• Opportunity to make things a bit more fun
• Opportunity to use more technology!

Clearly there is a difference between competition and gamification, however the whole workplace could be considered one of many games.

Applying software-based games, in my opinion, should increase visualization and engagement, but without proper care is unfair and could be dangerous to enforce across people with different roles, goals, personalities, and unique skills.

Anyway, one amusing example is my daughters school just offered 20 house-points to any child whose parents bake a cake for the Christmas Fair, there you go Gamification in the wild!

Based on this posting (from ex-Apple Exec) in which he suggest that the best way to increase sales is to rethink what a store features are, and it being a sector I have some past experience in, I jotted down some fun ideas on how stores might be improved:

• Mobile Stores – like the pop-up ones, although so far this seems more marketing than merchandising.
• Transparency – literally see-through walls that show me the back office, the stock room, the lunch room. Obviously retain security (incl. the toilets), but I’m interested and could be impressed.
• Show Realtime Data – put on the wall in big projected graphics what is selling, new items in, customer videos, promotions, and so on.
• Flash Competitions – give away something small, and/or enter me to win something big (e.g. monthly draw).
• Kill Paper Receipts – send me an email (or similar) with the receipt so can print it if I ever need it – plus bonus to the retailer who gets my email address! Better still put a sticker on the box that is the receipt. Perhaps the real solution is to scan the items serial number/barcode (or something) and the retailer keeps their own record of when/where this was sold. I don’t want a receipt really.
• Man Stuff – Offer something for those not shopping, beyond mags by the changing room. Project news headlines, twitter streams, factiods (!), and perhaps cartoons for the kids.
• Compete with Online – for example since I am taking the transport hit take any normal delivery fee off the item I am buying.
• Coordinated Pickup – I like keeping purchases at the store until I am ready to go home, instead of dragging them around with me. It would be really nice if one company did this for all stores, so I go to one pickup place for all my items.
• Mashup Stores – where products compliment each other, combine the store. Superstores and department stores kind of do it but co-branded stores might be interesting, such as Apple-and-Nike, or Currys-and-HMV).
• Plan the Assault – wouldn’t it be great if a store app had a map of where all products are on the shopfloor, so when I know what I want I can find them all. All chain-stores have a product placement plan so it can’t be that hard to build a heat-map type of thing. Also would be very handy for when they change the layouts, especially in large supermarkets.

Please comment, adding any other interesting ideas.

Of course this might be just me but it seems the best work and fun comes when building something yourself.

We can all build a little each day, its what makes me feel worthwhile!

Here are some examples:

• Building a new or improved product
• Building a tool to help do a task better or eliminating it
• Building a process to make a task more effective
• Building a market for increasing product sales
• Building positive personal perception (incl customer service experiences)
• Building useful and interesting relationships
• Building expertize and skillfulness
• Building information and knowledge resources
• Building a community or network

Like all building efforts you need a good plan, but from what I can tell it’s best to get the basic blueprint laid out and then start fairly quickly, as the sooner you can see (or measure) progress the better the reward, the more you’ll continue, and the broader your smile.

For actual problems it is going to be tough for an algorithm to determine what is needed to be done, especially because people are upset and so will communicate in vastly different ways (from general moaning to personal abuse). In addition, even if the action would be determined often the request (e.g. refund) isn’t possible and computers are poor a gauging the mood of the call and providing an appropriate response – aka “Computer says NO”. Also computers are no good at understanding when to go “the extra mile” or offer workarounds to satisfy something that the customer might only have hinted about.

This is mostly obvious but I can see the following specific benefits of a decent automated customer service assistant:

• Speed of call handling. Mechanizing the process should reduce the waffle and get to the point and required action somewhat quicker. It might be a little abrupt for some people of course.
• Tracking. Automation should ensure all information is recorded and reusable for follow up – reducing the need to repeat the history of a long running issue because it wasn’t properly documented.
• Number of calls that can be handled. Clearly this isn’t dependent on the number of operators, so thousands of concurrent calls could be handled. No more queues!!
• Fail-over to real person if needed. Stops frustration which is pretty likely in the early days.

I would personally give a customer service Siri-like cyborg a try to get some immediate options, but only as long as I could press zero and talk to a human (who would probably get even more grief thanks to the cyborg!).

Here are the salient points:

• To register I just entered my name and room number. Integration of back-end systems obviously took care of billing (actually free for my room type), and any more personal details needed.
• I could setup multiple devices (phone, iPad, laptop) with no conflicts and no repeat registration or billing.
• It extended throughout the whole resort, not just my room or the accommodation.
• I don’t know who provided the technical service – and I don’t care. There was an initial homepage upon first registering where I could get resort info (including a WiFi help-desk  if needed), but I was only forcefully dragged there once (i.e. I didn’t have to login ever again).

I consider the lesson here is to be successful you need to do things right. No one is naive enough to think that this doesn’t come without iteration and continuous improvement, however I had visited this resort not that long ago and last time there was no WiFi at all – which I understood and accepted – and now it’s the best WiFi I’ve ever encountered, just because it’s simple and complete.

As this example illustrates, removing restrictions, limitations, complexity and other user challenges is a great way to easily improve both products and customer services. As John Franklin said “simplicity taken to the extreme becomes elegance”.

Since all Customer Support teams are solving problems, here are some tips that apply to most types, including technical, business, billing, and general customer management.

Frame It Up

You cannot troubleshoot or solve something you don’t fully understand. So break the problem down carefully, ask the what, where, when, how type questions and document the answers to create a complete picture. Consider the scope and extent of the problem and its various effects and impacts. Also consider what is and isn’t affected as this helps identify key relationships, dependencies, and of course validate any assumptions.

Also for problems that are not total failures, consider why this is deemed a problem, since sometimes inappropriate expectations are at the root cause.

Recreate The Scenario

Try to reproduce the problem yourself. Getting a true visual understanding of the issue adds context and subtle nuances that are often very important in understanding the issue fully and identifying its causal factors.

Study The Evidence

Most problems leave a trail of how they came about. To analyze this effectively you need to know what to look for, where to look for it, and the real meaning of what you are looking at. This comes with experience, and by looking at similar problems, but may also originate through good training and detailed reference material. Be patient, very methodical, and thorough.

Process of Elimination

Take time to list out what could be the cause of the problem.  Prioritize these based on likelihood, then validate the top ones, collecting either useful details or simply eliminating possibilities. Top Tip: Only get sidetracked during validation if that line of investigation is more likely to yield something meaningful than the next potential cause on your list. If not, note it down and move on.

Divide and Conquer

Define the problem area (or process) into logical sections. Divide this list into two halves. Check one half for evidence of the problem and causes. Discard that half if nothing is found. Continue with the second half by first splitting it in two and choosing which half to investigate. Continue splitting and eliminating until you have pinpointed the precise problem area. This is best suited to long complex processes that result in a vague problem outcomes.

Don’t Jump In

It’s easy to dive right into complex problem analysis and lose sight of the real goal. This is especially true for technical problems, and often a simple replacement component fixes an issue without the need to take everything apart. Similarly check all the basics before going in-depth, make sure the usage and setup of the product or service fits with what is was designed and implemented to do.

Use Tools

A modern mechanic just plugs your car into a computer to diagnose problems – it’s quicker, more thorough, very consistent, and generally more reliable. Well designed products and services come with similar management tools that allow for checking key information to help spot and prevent problems. Don’t forget to use these to save you time and effort.

Better Rewards

• Weekly Awards worth having.  I’ve seen $20 Amazon.com vouchers work well.
• Non-Financial Recognition. I recently saw a special (closest) parking space for a weekly recognized best service rep.
• Special Opportunities – lunch with the MD, invite to a management meeting, project involvement, and a short offsite visit (e.g. our store or factory)
• Not just rewarding special situations, but recognition of heavy workloads that people deal with.  People in the trenches often help support the high-flyers without much recognition.

More Fun Tools

• Customization – Allow creation of limited extra capabilities, such as reporting.
• Visualization – add more graphics to represent boring data, help focus attention, and show trends.
• Personalization – so the tools look and feel how people really want.  Promotes ownership and proper use.
• Add Scoring and Ranking – but don’t forget to control the competitiveness though (e.g. show top 5 leaders only)

More Positive Service Outcomes

• Service Improvement suggestions that can be owned and really actioned with management
• Product Improvement suggestions for passing into the product development process
• Recognize practical cost saving suggestions and opportunities, again with ownership

Weekly Show-n-Tell

• What I learned this week.  Not everyone knows everything and no-one wants to learn the hard way.
• Amusing customer service stories or customer statements.  I keep a record of these to amuse myself occasionally.
• Tip of the Week – each week it passes to someone else to come up with it.

Everyone knows that when we enjoy what we’re doing we do it better.  Be brave and suggest something to your manager today.