Disruption Tour --- Run To Survive

Getting Paid Not To Work

Evolvingexcellence.com

Do you want a quick response while on the phone with customer service?  Should you?  A new book by Bill Price and David Jaffe, The Best Service is No Service, asks that very question.  I haven't read the book myself, so I'm referring to a review by David Price.

In theory, we should be living in a golden age of customer support. Blogs and Web sites make it easier than ever for consumers to reward good service and punish bad. Companies, for their part, can avail themselves of sophisticated customer-service technology and, thanks to the rise of Indian call centers, less-expensive workers. But reality hasn't seemed to follow theory.

Nope, not by any measure.

When calling an 800 number, we expect to find ourselves in voice-response hell. We dutifully follow instructions to key in a 10-digit policy number – only to be asked by the customer-service rep for the same darn number. Waiting on hold for 25 minutes? Well, that's what speakerphones are for. A simple email query languishes for days.

We know there are exceptions... Southwest, Amazon, and Apple come to mind.  So why the disparity?  It comes down to management... or leadership.

Senior executives at most companies, the authors believe, are simply in the dark. "The standard across most service operations is to report and track how quickly things were done," they write, "not how well they were done or how often, or why they needed to be done at all." Thus typical measures like "pickup within three rings" or "email response within 24 hours" hide more about customer service than they reveal. And the measuring is easily gamed.

Instead you should figure out why service is required at all.

The authors contrast these crude metrics with Amazon.com's focus on "CPX" – contacts per order, contacts per unit shipped, contacts per transaction and contacts per customer. In other words: Don't just ask how long it took to help the customer, ask how often the customer needed help and why. The goal is to avoid creating a need for a customer to contact the company in the first place.

The goal is to work customer service out of a job... not get them to work faster to handle more service calls. 

This reminds me of a very innovative company I visited over a decade ago, well before total productive maintenance became a core part of the lean lexicon.  It was a large molding operation that paid its mechanics... when they didn't work.  If the goal was to keep machines running, then why incent the practice of repair?  With the new compensation program, albeit difficult to implement in certain states with rigid labor rules, mechanics were paid on a sliding scale based on the percentage of the work day when they weren't directly working on a machine.  The response was immediate: preventive maintenance became the norm and the mechanics spent considerable time educating the operators in the proper care and feeding of the machines.  Everything revolved around keeping them up and running.  Putting off the inevitable simply created more pain later.

Are you measuring... and incenting... the creation of value to the customer?  Or just how well you respond to problems?

IBM Seeks Patent On Typing-To-Speech In A Call Center

techdirt.com

by Mike Masnick from the seriously? dept

theodp writes ""Caller: What is my account balance? The call handler responds by typing in the response '250 dollars.'" That's an excerpt from a pending IBM patent for cutting offshore call center costs further by hiring reps whose local accents make them incomprehensible to their U.S. customers without the magic of IBM text-to-speech synthesis, which Big Blue explains converts typed responses into "the native language and accent of the caller so that the outgoing voice sounds familiar to the caller.""

As Theodp noted in sending this in, you would think that Stephen Hawking's computerized speech system might count as a bit of prior art. Of course, while the patent covers more than just that, it's hard to see how the idea of letting someone type responses that are converted into speech deserves monopoly protection.

Getting It Right the First Time: Better First Call Resolution

In recent years, First Call Resolution has emerged as a critical element
for contact centers looking to become more customer centric. The FCR
metric focuses on how well a contact center handles customer requests
the first time, and most organizations agree that it is the only true
metric that delivers a clear measurement of their effectiveness and
customer satisfaction level.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/62423.html

how would you tell your customers that they matter?

 

Jon Burg Futurevisions.com

 NOTE: this is more than another "I Love Dell" Story

Everyone is applauding Dell for trolling the blogosphere for negative feedback.  But the far better story is their 180 degree customer-first service turnaround.  The key here is this: Dell isn't solving problems, they are creating positive impressions by generating positive experiences.

Trolling the blogosphere is like thanking a burglar for only stealing your television but leaving the stereo system. It's reactive marketing. Customer support needs to be as proactive and delightful as possible.

• Customers are paying for your product.  Customers expect not to face any problems.  There often are problems, and even if the user is at fault, brands need to create a positive user experience. 

• Re-active blogger outreach and response is a negative PR/brand equity stop gap, not a solution. 

• Active branding and successful marketing require more than satisfaction, they deliver delight.  And delight can only occur if the customer feels valued.

How do you know if a brand really cares about their customers?

Visit their websites.  Where is the contact form?  Where is the contact phone number?  How long does the average user have wait on hold before getting through to customer service via online chat or a phone call?  Is your customer service representative empowered with the ability to deliver timely and satisfactory resolutions to potential issues?

Jeff Jarvis wrote a fantastic article in last week's Business Week outlining Dell's customer service turnaround.  Michael Parekh recently posted about his own experience with Dell.  While Dell has come a long way, it still took a blog post from an influential blogger to get an executive response and a timely solution. Dell's customer support wanted to help, but their internal system was crippling their support personnel.  And this is coming from a market leader.

Nevertheless, DELL WILL SUCCEED BECAUSE THEY COMMUNICATE THAT THEY CARE! Dell's website prominently features Support & Help with the same equal prominence as their products.  This makes a clear statement: customer support is an integral part the Dell product. 

This alone would be reason enough to buy a Dell - even if I haven't had YEARS of horrible experiences with HP.

__________________________________________

KEY TAKEAWAY: Too many companies are looking at the shiny object that is social media, viral PR, positive buzz and blogger outreach without reconsidering the basics.  New Media isn't about what's new, it's about doing everything that you should have been doing all along, and doing it better than ever before.  Don't just say that you care, market that care.  Feature that sentiment throughout your product marketing, be it the product, promotions, messaging, design or sales.  Dell will succeed not because they are minimizing negative buzz, but because their service and support is a featured part of their product offering.  Computers are frustrating. Dell sells more than a machine, they sell ease of use and peace of mind.

Why salespeople should NEVER perform telephone follow-up!

ballistix.com

Why salespeople should NEVER perform telephone follow-up!

When I insist that Sales Coordinators -- and never Salespeople -- should make follow-up calls, there's always a howl of protest from Salespeople.

"What about the relationship?" is the instinctive response, followed by, "but Sales Coordinators don't have technical skills -- or sales skills".

Of course we can immediately discount the instinctive response (Executives have PA's don't they?), but it *is* worth considering the implications of a non-technical, non-salesperson performing follow-up calls.

Obviously, if the salesperson's assistant performs all follow-up calls, the content of these calls cannot be of a technical or sales nature.

And that's a very good thing!

To understand why, consider why we're making a follow-up call.

The purpose of a follow-up call is simply to schedule (and sometimes to confirm) the next activity in the opportunity-management process.

The call is not -- and should never be -- a sales call. The thing is, if you have (field-based) salespeople, we must assume that your product can't (or shouldn't) be sold on the phone. (If you can sell on the phone, get rid of your field-based salespeople and do just that.)

Accordingly, we want to quarantine salesmanship (and technical discussions) in face-to-face meetings where they belong. If we fail to do this, there's a very real danger that the opportunity-management process will devolve into an ongoing conversation!

Now, consider what happens to the salesperson when she knows that her sales coordinator will make all follow-up calls. This forces her to ensure that she has closure at the end of each meeting.

In practice, this means that she must get her client to agree to one of the three possible outcomes from each meeting (to proceed to the next activity in the opportunity management process, to repeat the current activity, or to abandon the opportunity).

This means that the purpose of the follow-up call is simply to schedule this next activity.

On occasion it will be necessary for the Sales Coordinator to confirm the next step in the opportunity-management process. (This might be because the prospect has to confer with another person before committing to the next step.) In this case, it is the responsibility of the salesperson to explain the various options open to the prospect and advise him that purpose of the Sales Coordinator's follow-up call will simply be to confirm the appropriate option and then schedule it.

This ensures that the Sales Coordinator maintains control over the opportunity-management process and is, of course, in keeping with our primary sales management objective: to maximise opportunity flow.

Ring-To-Number Wards Off Bad Pick-up Lines

from mashable.com

CallDigits has just launched a new service called Ring-To-Number, which is a tool that lets you offer tool free ways for people to call you, without you giving out your real phone number.

This product is being promoted as a way to protect your identity from people online, but this can be used for off line purposes as well. The biggest difference between Ring-To-Number and similar call-me tools like Jajah and Jaxtr is that this isn’t a web-based service that requires callers to use VoIP in order to contact you.

There are two different types of accounts you can get with Ring-To-Number: the free account provides you with a non-local number that people can call, along with the necessary shortcode to get in touch with you directly. The paid account gives you a local number with no required shortcode. This will cost you about $5.00 per month. These calls can be directed to a landline, a mobile phone, or a VoIP service of your choice. There are also widgets that display your Ring-To-Number assigned number that will also let site visitors see if you’re available to take call.

Recommended: Piczo Stuff at Mashcodes!

Microsoft connects voice calling, video to Office programs, blurring phone-desktop distinction

Technologyreview.com click here for more...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday launched two new programs that allow people to place calls right from the Outlook e-mail program, but analysts say businesses won't throw away their reliable office phone systems until the software maker's tools are just as good.

The new programs build on server and desktop software Microsoft introduced in 2005 that wove both instant messaging and indicators of ''presence'' -- when a user is online, busy or logged off -- into other communications programs in the Office suite.

The latest versions of Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007 add voice calling and video conferencing. Computer users looking at an e-mail in Outlook can see whether the sender and other recipients are online and available to talk. With one click, a user can invite the whole group to an IM chat, a call or a video conference.

Communicator, a desktop application, also shows users whether their contacts are online, much as an IM buddy list does. Users also can see their contacts' presence on Windows smart phones and new desk and speakerphones that plug into Ethernet jacks or PCs.

Based on whether someone is on the phone or has a meeting scheduled in Outlook, for example, their presence suggests to colleagues whether to call, e-mail or IM.

More than one war may be decided by customer service

Futurevisions.com

Isn't it a shame that one of the most innovative products of the year, the iPhone, is being talked about not for it's amazing features, but the many ways Apple has messed with their loyal customer base? Whether it be paper bills of encyclopedic proportions, refund-gate or most recently iBrick-gate, Apple's marketing engine seems to have lost their mojo.  Their sales will continue to climb because of their amazingly engineered products; but this growth is not due to their marketing efforts but despite them.

With the next generation of broadband connectivity (and all the IPTV goodness it brings) finally making it into our homes, it looks like customer centric marketing may very well determine the victor in what is already a fiercely competitive market.  While Comcast has driven an elderly woman to open a can on their merchandise at a retail store, Verizon is touting a new age of home connectivity that empowers customers by delivering a better, stronger consumer experience.   With Verizon it's all about the customer, and this is why they already have a leg up in my mind.

A few months of slow access with DSL and years of satisfactory experience with cable connectivity have created an affinity that is not easily erased.  However, the forgettable customer service I've encountered with cable companies to date may very well lead me to try out Verizon's latest offering in FiOS.

Futurevisions.com

Isn't it a shame that one of the most innovative products of the year, the iPhone, is being talked about not for it's amazing features, but the many ways Apple has messed with their loyal customer base? Whether it be paper bills of encyclopedic proportions, refund-gate or most recently iBrick-gate, Apple's marketing engine seems to have lost their mojo.  Their sales will continue to climb because of their amazingly engineered products; but this growth is not due to their marketing efforts but despite them.

With the next generation of broadband connectivity (and all the IPTV goodness it brings) finally making it into our homes, it looks like customer centric marketing may very well determine the victor in what is already a fiercely competitive market.  While Comcast has driven an elderly woman to open a can on their merchandise at a retail store, Verizon is touting a new age of home connectivity that empowers customers by delivering a better, stronger consumer experience.   With Verizon it's all about the customer, and this is why they already have a leg up in my mind.

A few months of slow access with DSL and years of satisfactory experience with cable connectivity have created an affinity that is not easily erased.  However, the forgettable customer service I've encountered with cable companies to date may very well lead me to try out Verizon's latest offering in FiOS.

VoodooVox: Building a Voice 2.0 Ad Network

From techcrunch.com

As if we didn’t have enough advertising in our lives, now we can look forward to listening to ads while on hold during a phone call, or while using a free Web telephony service. One startup trying to make that happen is VoodoVox out of New York City. Backed by Softbank Capital, Apax Partners, and Steamboat Ventures (Disney), VoodooVox has raised a total of $13 million so far. CEO J. Scott Hamilton wants to make VoodooVox the DoubleClick of what is known as “in-call” advertising. “It’s 1994 again” he says, “and I’m selling banners to people who don’t even know what a banner is.” What he is really selling is a relatively new form of audio advertising.

VoodooVox started out five years ago building automated systems to handle incoming calls to radio stations, but in the past year-and-a-half it’s expanded to delivering targeted audio ads over the phone and elsewhere. Radio shows like Howard Stern’s or request shows on MTV can generate hundreds of thousands of calls per day. VoodooVox’s software handles those calls, records the incoming messages, and can collect the demographic information from callers as well. Adding advertising was a no-brainer. For instance, here is one ad for MSN Music that ran on NYC hip-hop station Hot97’s call-in line. (Listener’s were prompted to “press 9″ to get an offer from MSN Music sent to their mobile phones).

The 400 or so radio stations that already use VoodooVox for call management, and 200 other “voice publishers” like calling card companies, receive 300 million calls a month. Currently, VoodooVox is serving audio ads in about 10 percent of those and getting average CPMs of $10 to $15, which it splits 50/50 with the companies receiving the calls. That gives VoodooVox the critical mass to become an audio ad network. It just struck an undisclosed $2.3 million deal with Jones MediaAmerica (a radio ad sales rep firm) for Jones to resell VoodooVox ads to radio and TV stations.

But radio is the just the start. “We happen to be serving them into phone calls but there is no reason why we cannot serve them into other media,” says Hamilton. These ads could just as easily be inserted into Web-based telephony services or even online music services. In fact, VoodooVox powers ads on Web-based voicemail services MyVox and SayNow, and is in talks with audio app Blabberize . In a way, this is like radio ads all over again, except these tend to be 10 to 15 seconds long and work best when placed in spots that don’t interrupt actual calls or entertainment experiences.

Ad-supported Voice 2.0 apps like free 411 calls are nothing new, but Hamilton has higher ambitions. “We feel cell services and even your landline will be supported by ads,” he predicts. Maybe some day. But for now, just look at all the VOIP calls being generated over the Web. It’s easier for startups to come up with new Voice 2.0 apps than with a way to make money from them. Hamilton sees all of those calls as inventory to fill with his ads. It is not difficult to imagine how online music services could benefit as well. Most experiments with ad-supported calls or music on the Web today still stick with visual banner ads on the Webpage serving the audio. But who looks at those pages? When I am streaming music from an online music site, for instance, I usually have it in an open tab in the background. I am consuming the service through my speakers instead. Same with telephony apps. The experience is through the headset.

An audio ad is something I wouldn’t be able to avoid so easily. On the other hand, it could be much more annoying if it wasn’t opt-in because listening to something I don’t want to actually wastes my time and would be more likely to drive me away from a service forever. But the idea of a DoubleClick for audio ads is still very intriguing.

Big Brother Eyes VoIP? The Proof Is in the Pudding

Technewsworld.com

Users of Pudding Media's free, phone service might want to watch what they say, because the system listens for keywords in their phone conversations and displays related ads on their computer screens.

A consumer talking about movies, for example, may see links to trailers, reviews and show times for nearby theaters. A sports fan talking about a favorite team, meanwhile, may see commentary and game statistics.

The service is designed to enable free calling for consumers through advertising offers that get served based on the topics they are discussing. In so doing, it allows mobile carriers, Internet telephony providers and Web publishers to offer new ad-