Options:
Showing newest posts with label People. Show older posts
Showing newest posts with label People. Show older posts

An Ode to Customer Service Professionals

Being a customer service professional is a courageous decision. Though I am sure most of customer service professionals are pushed to make this decision because customer service jobs are in abundance with none or very less prior experience required. After all, you can teach anybody to follow manuals.
 
But I still feel that we all customer service professionals are always doing spirited and courageous jigs. Spirited because when whole world is partying, we are serving them so that they remember their party for whole life. When whole world is going around with their loved ones on Valentines Day, we are working hard so that their bond of love gets strong. When whole world is preparing for Diwali/Christmas holidays, we work hard so that these holidays become memorable for everyone whom we touch. 
 
This is a courageous effort also because very few customers acknowledge the efforts of customer service people. It is always assumed we are doing their jobs and we do not need any bouquets for our efforts. After all, we are paid for doing this. And since we are the faces of many service oriented businesses, our share in brickbats is largest. We are responsible for every single goof-up. But we always try to remain cool and continue to do our jobs. If this is not courage, then what it is.   
 
For us, every transaction is a new begining. As we start our new interaction with a new customer, all our past interactions are wiped clean from the slate. After all, every customer is different and his needs and demands will be different from the last one. And our job is to be consistent in every interaction so that customer walks away with fine memories associated with brand. Any goof-up and all our past transactions will not be able to save us from the fury of an angry customer whom we have accidently rubbed on some wrong side. 
 
We customer service guys are a spirited breed and I am proud to be part of this ever expanding breed.

Links to this post

I am happy


Hi Adesh
 
i am sure zoobie has told you that i am working on a project on service quality for **** and i dont even know the 's' of it.. i did go through your blog and found it extremely good- i might be quoting a few lines from your blog - hope its ok with you.

 
nyways might even take your help over the weekend also
 
thanks...


Few weeks back I received above email from one of my friend who happens to be a part of customer service or service quality (organization terminology) team (I am withholding the name of the brand as requested). She wrote me asking to use some of my blog things in her organization presentation. I was glad that someone found something useful in my blog which can be used to make customer service better in an organization.
 
This happens so often that while working we try to monitor some metrics and feel that they will guide the business to some new heights. If you are in a call centre, your SLAs will be number of calls (more the merrier), average time of call (less is better) etc. In retail, it is footfalls (more the merrier), average value of bill (higher is good) etc. In blogs, number of hits (more the merrier), number of comments (sky is the limit) etc. 
 
But behind all these defined metric, we tend to forget the true meaningful conversations which are building blocks of any business or blog. We never measure in call centres whether relationships with customers got stronger or not. No track of bonds getting stronger or weaker with customers in your retail store.

This mail just showed that there are 'soft metrics' which makes keeping blogs much more worthwhile. I am happy.

Links to this post

Stupid me...

A true story.


This is so amazing effort that I do not have words to explain that. And more so they have challenged the sarkari ways of Railways. Rather than whinning about the problem, they decided to take care of it.
Cool. Great. Superb. A great news to start a new decade.

When heroes are around me, I do not know why I go to a cinema hall to find one! Stupid me. Maybe I need to observe more.

Links to this post

Mannerisms and Customer Interactions





Delhi is to host CommonWealth Games in 2010. Apart from readiness of sports venues and infrastructure, there is one more issue which is worrying many politicians. Behaviour of Delhi junta. Yes, you read it right. Our Chief Minister and Home Minister thinks that in order to host games successfully Delhites should mend their habits. They have to be more polite, behave in friendly manner and if possible, should take classes in mannerisms.

Some lessons in customer service are also need to be given to many small shop owners as visitors will be interacting with them. I am not saying they are not polite or friendly but they need to make some subtle changes in their behavior so that they can project themselves as more customer friendly shops.

We Indians, in general, never smile to strangers and never exchange greetings with strangers. This is acceptable on streets but not when customer enters inside the shop. At the most we nod our heads and that means customer's presence is acknowledged. Well, a hearty smile may help in building trust that go a long way. 
   
You enter any shop and present your query to shopkeeper. He reply to your query without looking at you. In fact, he might keep himself busy in what he is doing and may not acknowledge your presence at all. This is considered to be extremely rude in West. In India, it is chalta hai!

We unknowingly put our hands on waist, while talking to customers. Another sign of hostility towards customers. Okay, not exactly hostility but another gesture which depicts our not-so-customer-friendly attitude.

These are some gestures which come to my mind which are doing exactly fine with Indians but may not go down well with firangis.

Let me know, in case you have anything to add.

Links to this post

Virtues that are impossible to find...

Few days back, I met a manager in one of the casual meetings and he was discussing his CEO’s working style. 

Key points that emerged were:

He shares information immediately with all concerned. He does not wait for any formal occasion or meeting and does not wait for sending an e-mail to share information, however small it may be. His sole agenda is to ensure information is passed onto respective stakeholders so that things keep moving smoothly.

He does a lot of informal meetings and chat sessions with his team members. His meetings are short and most of the time happen in cubicles of team members. No pre-scheduling of meeting times, and no blocking of meeting rooms. In case any data is to be seen, it happens at team member's PC only. No time wasted on presentations or excel sheets.

His favorite one liner is - pick up the phone and talk. I guess it is a simple but an effective thing to move things in any organization.

Another one liner which he is famous for – emails can wait but resolutions cannot. Rightly said, move things and not emails.

I was astonished to hear about the working style of this CEO. In this age of Internet, PowerPoint, Excel and Voice Mail, he still believes in keeping things simple.

All the above qualities are seen as virtues these days and it seems so difficult to follow these simple but yet effective ways of resolution.

Sounds interesting, right?

Links to this post

Friends...


The other day I was having a conversation with my friend who was seeking some kind of information on cars. I told him proudly that one of my blogger friends is a car enthusiast and we can seek his opinion. “In this changing world, our categories of friends are increasing by every passing day. The life is becoming amazing.” He replied. 

I was hit by the word ‘categories of friends’. I thought about these categories of friends and decided to jot down. As I started to think, my list of friend categories went up to 8.    

My list is as below (not in any particular order): 
Running friends – Friends whom I meet once in a month for a 10 KM run. All are amazing people but our conversation starts with a run and ends with run. We have exchanged our phone numbers, email IDs but most of the conversation revolves around preparation of next run. 

Drinking buddies – We get together once in a week or once in two weeks and drink ‘away to glory’. We discuss everything under the sun. We try to remain in touch. Most of our drinking programs are made and finalized just a day before actual ‘event’. 

Blogger friends – We share knowledge, help each other and stay regular in touch through blogs.
 
Other Social Network friends – Huge list of friends and connections on Facebook, Orkut and LinkedIn wherein my friend’s friend is also my friend. But it stays there only. 
College friends – Some good college friends who care to stay in touch or with whom I wanted to stay in touch.  

School friends – Same as above 

Elevator friends – These are my friends whom I meet regularly or irregularly in elevator. We exchange Hellos and generally discuss jobs, life, weather and society. Meeting time is less – sometimes as less as 20 seconds but fruitful.
Office friends – Need not to write much. Most of the conversations revolve around office happenings only.   

Family friends – These are friends which are passed on to me by my parents. I do not know them well but need to ‘mark my attendance’ whenever required.  
When I was a kid, I used to have a best friend, some good friends and then the rest. This was a kind of trend with everyone at that time. I knew this small set of friends very well. I knew their choices of games, and their choices of toys.  I knew their parents also. Their brothers and sisters were my brothers and sisters as well.  

The number of friends was less but all of them were special. They were like extended ‘me’. 
Above listed friends are special in their own ways but the domain of friendship is limited. Each category a small extension of my personality. 
Please do share if you also have similar kind of friend categories.

 

Links to this post

Blame the leader

In Army there is a saying, praise publicly, rebuke privately.  

I realized the importance of this saying on this weekend when I visited a book store called Landmark. I noticed that a person in authoritative position (may be a store manager or area manager) was standing in the middle of store and asking all his supervisors and sales representatives to meet him. Apparently, some employees had left the store without making entry in a designated register. This did not go down well with the person in position. He decided to give verbal warning to all present employees by standing in the middle of the store. Though he was not shouting at his employees but it was not hard to make out that he was giving all his peace of mind to helpless employees. The long faces of employees showed all the signs of dejection, low motivation and state of being. 

The look on the faces of employees said it all.  

In retail stores all sales representatives are paid peanuts. They work in extreme hard conditions. They come to stores early and they stay late. They do mundane tasks like cleaning and dusting. They stand whole day and they have no time for rest. They also do most important task – interact with customers. After working so hard, appreciation rarely comes their way. And spanking, they get in public.  

I am sure it is difficult to expect good customer service from such dejected employees. And whom to blame? I think the leader. 
What's your take? 

Links to this post

Impatience and Customer Service

Anger and I have shared a long relationship. A short tempered beast inside me would awaken at  the slightest hint. At times, no reason was required. I used to get angry even if someone shouted at me. I used to get angry if someone played some harmless prank at me. I used to get angry at almost everything and everybody. 

Then I joined Customer Service department in my present organization where my team consists of only ladies and most of them are elder than me. I learnt to have milder, no shouting and no high pitched conversation. I knew I succeeded to some extent when my colleagues  started telling me “How come you are always so cool and calm? We have never seen you getting irritating on anything or anyone.”  

I am writing about this entire anger thing because my dear blogger friend LEB has tagged me. 
Over the period my temperament may have got better (Zoobie disagrees) but my impatience to bad customer service has increased. In this post, I am sharing such instances of my impatience. 

“Obviously” replied a cashier to me at a food joint when I checked with him whether a certain item from bill is deleted or not. I think word ‘obvious’ has become a sort of takiya-kalam in India and lot of youngsters use it anywhere in a conversation. I have always felt that this word brings some kind of arrogance in a person’s attitude and tone and should not be used at all if you, even remotely, deal with customers.  
Once I waited for more than forty minutes to exchange my stuff for another product in an organized store. The staff had long list of their reasons for not doing it fast. I was frustrated, irritated but somehow managed not to show it to staff.  
Long billing lines and long time taken during billing in organized retail stores can make saints shout. Products do not get scanned, mismatch in pricing and freebies not getting scanned are common reasons for delay. Whatever may be the reason, long billing lines raise my temper. 

“I will call you after my meeting is over” is definitely the most overused excuse. I heard this so many times when I am chasing someone to get some work done and service provider is too busy to take up more work. But he is too courteous to refuse me outright. I have always felt this is height of unprofessional behavior and it does make me frustrated.  

Customer following up with service provider, for which he has already paid, is somehow becoming a norm in Indian service industries. Ramesh wrote a post on how Indians are unable to work without follow ups. This poor work habit is being fast imbibed in Indian service industries and this irks me a lot. 
Sales persons are busy on mobile phones while customer is waiting for their attention, is a sad sight and tests my patience. Are there any calls which are more important than customers? I doubt.  

“Sir, I am calling from _____ company and we are offering blah, blah, ……, blah. Are you interested?” said the voice. A curt ‘no’ was my reply. “Thank you.” said the voice.
Attending calls of tele-callers which dole out scripts in mechanical tone is serious wastage of time, money and do bring me on the verge of losing patience.   
Discounted products are promoted as full length advertisement in a newspaper by a retailer and he forgot to mention the stores where it is applicable. I once drove 60 kilometers to avail a certain promotional coupon but on reaching the store, it was communicated to me that promotion is not applicable in their store. I shouted at store staff, told them that you are losing a customer but nothing worked. I learnt to be more careful in reading ‘Terms & Conditions apply’. 

Interacting with any call centre is a pain. After dialing the call centre number, punching more numbers, waiting for service representative for 30 minutes and then a call drop. Phew! It is a tough task and needs a truck load of patience which I do not have. 

Biggest test of patience comes when stern processes and not common sense drive service professionals. Once my Delhi bound flight landed in Ahmedabad because of bad weather. Flyers were hungry and thirsty as there was no water on flight. Flyers could see shops open in airport but were not allowed to leave flight as it was against the process.  

With these ten vents on impatience, I am through with my longest post on this blog.  
In case you have something more to add to this list, please do share. 

PS: - There are some other tags which I need to fulfill but will do after sometime. Let me give some rest to my grey cells.
 

Links to this post

Happy Customers - Asset to die for...

Happy employees can make lot of difference. Even in hospitals!

Hindustan Times reported

The findings suggest that the single-biggest factor in patient satisfaction is hospital employee morale, which starts with outside-the-box thinking at the very top management levels.

Hospitals are taking extra measure these days to make their patients comfortable. It seems apart from good doctors, it is other customer friendly initiatives which are helping them in keeping their patients happy.

...at the Florida hospital where patients receive a welcome letter with the CEO's signature and home phone number, they're also paid a visit by their unit's nurse manager, who also leaves cell and office phone numbers.

In difficult times like these loyal customers and happy employees are indeed a great asset.

Links to this post