Is Siri A Glimpse Into The Future Of Customer Service?

Yes and No. So I see for simple requests for action a siri-like service agent could work.  Things like ‘send me a new part,’ or to request a engineer visit, it seems like a nice extension to the current (annoying) automated call handling where you “press or say 1″ to do this and “press or say 2″ to do that.

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!).

Success Insight: Be Simple and Complete

I recently went on vacation and found something unusual that brought a smile to my face as a consumer and frequent traveler – decent WiFi connection. By decent I do NOT mean the speed/bandwidth, but actually the completeness of the service.

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”.

7 Problem Solving and Analysis Techniques

In working on my next book, Supporting Enterprise Applications, I am trying to help folks like me whose sole task in life is to troubleshoot and diagnose product problems. I’ve noticed many of the techniques used in supporting software can be applied elsewhere and indeed a lot of what I am including in the book originate from outside the I.T. industry.

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.

Making Customer Service More Fun

As mentioned in the “Getting and Staying Healthy” section of my book, fun is a bit of a cheesy cliche and is often ignored or shelved as not a “priority” in the 24×7 overloaded service delivery world in which we operate.  The problem is Service Quality is always hanging around the top of the CEO’s agenda but it’s just hard to get a meaningful and positive action as a result.  One simple and often-forgotten way is to simply put more fun into work.  Here are some real examples I’ve seen and used:

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.

Restoring Your Faith In Serving Customers

Most of the time Customer Service professionals never see the rewards of their hard work.  An occasional “thank you” is usually the best we get!  In reality (or should that be theory) when we perform well it’s the Sales Team that benefit from the customer loyalty we generate.  Yes a service contract might be renewed, and that pays our wages, however it doesn’t really give us a warm feeling inside and overly encourage delivering the best service we can.  Service delivery guidelines, and our personality and conscience, tend to play a bigger role.

So I thought it would be good to share the following anecdotal story that might just inspire you today:

Back in the days when an Ice Cream Sundae costs much less, a 10 year old boy entered a Hotel Coffee Shop and sat at a table.  A waitress put a glass of water in front of him and he asked “how much is an Ice Cream Sundae?”.  The waitress replied “35 Cents”.  The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied his coins.  “Well how much is a plain dish of Ice Cream?” he inquired.  By now more people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient. “30 Cents” she brusquely replied. The little boy again counted his coins.  “I’ll have the plain Ice Cream” he said.  The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table, and walked away.  The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier, and left.  When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down the table.  There, placed neatly beside the empty dish were five 1cent coins.  You see, he couldn’t have the Sundae because he had to have enough left to leave her a tip.

Not everyone takes Customer Service for granted, and the more personal and human you can make the experience the more respect and reward will come your way.  The waitress here was lucky, although perhaps the boy was grateful he wasn’t just thrown out!

Customer Service Tips From My New Book

My new (actually first) book  – Managing Oracle Fusion Applications – has now been published, hurrah, and is available from all well-known online retailers (Amazon, B&N etc).  Clearly it’s main focus is on one specific enterprise software application product set, however hidden in the 352 pages are customer service principles that can be applied in many areas and therefore fit nicely here.

1. Provide a clear interface with your customers, both in-front and behind you.  In the book I discuss how an Application Administrator should set-up both standard interaction processes and easy-to-use reporting dashboards with all parties they engage with.  The easier it is to get things done, and to see what is going on, the happier everyone usually is.

2. Encourage Work Transparency. In order for end users and other departments to understand, appreciate, and respect the work involved in managing enterprise software applications they have to be able to see that work.  Similarly, customer satisfaction is all based on expectations, and if your customer can see you making significant efforts to meet those expectations the happier they will be, especially when the end result is a bit slow to materialize.

3. Create a Clear and Complete Plan. In the book I cover what I call the five tenets of Enterprise Application Management; Reliability, Availability, Performance, Optimization, and Governance.  This covers all angles and requirements and allows a complete work and reporting structure to be built. Similarly customer engagement requires a complete plan, so that services on offer can really be delivered effectively and those all important expectations met.

4. Set Targets and Guidelines.  For each of the tenets above the book contains a toolbox of features, functions, and capabilities that can be used to set and deliver on predefined targets, including items like Service Level Agreements that might include a monthly check that the application available 99.9% of the time.  The old adage “cannot manage what you cannot measure” is harder to apply in the soft world of customer satisfaction, but that’s no excuse not to try.  Surveys, polls, questionnaires, interviews, and feedback forms all allow collection of at least some level of feedback on how well things are going.

5. Adhere To Standards. There is a comprehensive suite of Governance, Risk, and Compliance product features included in the Enterprise Application and we look at how this can significantly help identify and avoid real problems.  Similarly in Customer Service delivery it makes sense to understand what competitors and similar companies are delivering and what is generally considered good practice by customers.  The use of specialist agencies that focus on in customer service delivery can help with this, such as the UK’s Institute of Customer Service.

6. Out-Perform and Improve. Again as mentioned above, the book considers obvious areas such as Performance, Availability, and Reliability as key application management factors to plan for, however also emphasizes Optimization so that not only are we meeting the current needs but also continuously improving so that service expectations are actually exceeded.

7. Identify and Know How To Use Appropriate Tooling. Indeed the whole reason for writing the book is to help companies get the most out of their Enterprise Software Application suite, and to do that they need to understand a great many tools, utilities, and complex moving parts.  Service delivery operations are no different, and a conscious effort must be made to instrument appropriate tooling and ensure those involved know exactly how to get the best from it.

8. Be Positive but Plan for Contingency and Risk Mitigation. Clearly managing software applications is first focused on making sure the system is available and working for end users, that much is obvious, however even with the best will in the world at some point something bad is going to occur and its what happens next (long outage vs invisible fail-over) is what highlights great system management.  The same applies to service delivery, sometimes things go wrong and when that happens it’s an opportunity to win customer loyalty by showing how slick your company operation is even in the most difficult circumstances.

Try reviewing your customer service delivery operations against these and I’d be amazed if there isn’t something you could improve upon.

Customer Expectations & Temper Tantrums

I was looking at my 18month old son the other day and noticed that he’s started the phase of throwing temper tantrums when he doesn’t get what he wants.  I began thinking why this might have started all of a sudden.

I think I worked out that now he understands more about his environment he wants more control over it. He also has more anger, or should I say frustration, in that he knows more about what is possible and what exactly he wants – in other words he has expectations. Sound familiar?

Our expectations of consumer goods and services are set all the time, indeed marketeers go out of their way to explain how you get “even more” with their companies offerings.  But Customer Service, unlike ever expanding expectations, has boundaries, and repeatedly crossing them to satisfy customer requests will loose companies money faster than water goes down a plug hole.

Defining those boundaries seems dangerous, we automatically think customers are like my son and don’t like hearing “no”.  In my experience that is not actually true, and everyone actually comes off better when this is done. Customers know what to expect from the customer service team and indeed know full-well that they’ll get what they pay for since  delivering fully-featured customer services is not cheap.  Of course another company is offering something you’re not for the same price, that another story.

Anyway, with solid expectations issues can be discussed and addressed in a very straight forward fashion, and solutions tend to be much faster due to less pushing and questioning to-and-fro.

Think about this next time a customer asks for something way beyond the normal boundaries of your service, simply be honest and explain why it’s not possible in a clear manner, and reset their expectations so that they don’t throw a tantrum the next time they don’t get what they think they have been sold!