Customer Service

lessons from used tires

It’s pretty easy to confuse flash for substance. To think that we’ll do better once our surroundings, our products, our marketing are better. Once we have the nicer office, we’ll keep it better organized. Once we have a better brochure, we’ll be better salespeople. Once the new software is set up, we’ll provide better service to our customers. Once we redo the lobby, we’ll get more business.

And it’s a lie. We tell it to ourselves because flash is easier than substance.

Appearances do matter, but delivery matters more. Looks can give credibility to a first impression, but results keep people coming back. All else being equal, flash will attract more attention, but things are rarely equal.

I was reminded of this lesson over the weekend. My truck needed new tires so I headed over to my favorite tire shop on Saturday morning. It’s a business that most would say are doing everything wrong. They:

Only sell used tires. Used tires are not sexy.

Only carry popular sizes. Need something special ordered? They don’t do that.

Don’t advertise (as far as I know). If they do it’s in the local trader classifieds.

Don’t have any product displays. No pretty pictures of families traveling in their car, tough four wheel drives adventuring through the back country, or sports cars gripping the road at high speed. The only display they have is a shop with tires stacked to the roof. If you’re buying from them you want tires, not a lifestyle validation.

Don’t have individual bays for each car. They have a shaded concrete slab that’s about three cars wide. It looks like a race car pit crew decided to work in a driveway.

Don’t have a reception area. There is no lobby. The office is where you go to pay and it’s off to the side. There isn’t even a dedicated person to greet you.

Are off the beaten path where you would never pass by in your daily activities. You’d never even find them accidentally. They are in a rough and forgotten part of town. Not dangerous, just poor and long neglected.

Look well worn. The shop is old galvanized metal and looks like it belongs on a weathered farm. The office is the size of a small garden shed and is clearly an afterthought. The business name was painted on the outside once, but has long since faded and been obscured.

Don’t pamper the customer. You could wait in the office but probably don’t want to. Most just sit outside near the cars on plastic chairs.

The appearance doesn’t inspire confidence. There is no flash. Judging by looks you’d assume they can barely afford to be in business. And you’d be wrong simply because of what they get right. They:

Are friendly. They talk to and joke with their customers. They enjoy their work and their customers and it shows. Many repair shops are terrible with customers and these guys really stand out.

Are fast, fast, fast. Saturday morning and I was in and out in less than an hour. Done and on with my day.

Are busy. It is always a beehive of activity. The place would look abandoned EXCEPT for all the people and cars always there.

Greet you quickly. Despite all the noise and chaos of power tools, cars, people, etc. I have never waited more than 30 seconds before someone noticed me and came over to help me.

Know who they are and what they do. They don’t pretend to be anything else or waste the customer’s time trying to do something they can’t.

Thrive on repeat business and word of mouth. I’ve bought at least four sets of tires from them and every time I’m there it seems that most of the other customers are just as enthusiastic and have been coming to them for years.

Are empowered. There is no visible chain of command, no noticeable differentiation between employees. Everyone is helpful and everyone helps.

Have freakishly low prices. Seriously. They clearly aren’t spending money on their location, buildings, or marketing and the customer benefits. They’ve used what most would consider a major disadvantage (location and appearance) and turned it into a huge competitive advantage.

Are not a “me too” business. They have the segment to themselves. While others fight and scramble for their piece of the pie, these guys found a niche where they get the whole pie for themselves.

Want you to come back. Too many businesses stop caring the second they have your money. Not these guys. The manager/owner stopped working on a car as I left to shake my hand and tell me to come by if I needed anything, had trouble with the tires, or wanted them rotated.

What can we learn? Reputation matters. Attitude matters. A focus on long-term service matters. Speed matters. Results matter. What you deliver matters. Caring about the customer matters.

What other lessons can we take from this? How else does this apply to HR, leadership, sales, Realtors, health care, and everyone else?

it’s not my fault

“IT’S NOT MY FAULT! I’M NOT TAKING THE HIT ON THIS ONE!”

Few things are more awkward than being in the presence of people who are arguing. Except maybe when they are arguing about you.

“THEY CAME IN AND SAT DOWN WHEN SHE WAS ON BREAK. SHE DIDN’T NOTICE THEM.”

We were at a “travel center” (which is a vague marketing euphemism for truck stop) in the middle of somewhere New Mexico. It had been a long day of driving and we were trying to decide whether to push on despite an ugly storm brewing to the east or find a hotel and not arrive home the next day until several hours later than planned. Right now we needed food.

The gentleman tending the buffet told us we should get our meals, have a seat, and our waitress would get our drink order. Easy enough, except she didn’t. One waitress was tending the booths on either side of us and was able to completely block out our presence from her consciousness. Another focused on customers on the other side of the room.

Eventually, we stopped the waitress working near us and mentioned that no one had come by to take our drink order. She went off and hassled the other waitress. Waitress #2 came by, seemed apologetic, and we told her we were ready to go but would like to get some water in to-go cups. She disappeared and we could hear her talking to a third person who I’m assuming was the manager.

Cue the yelling. Start the blaming. They were behind a thin wall that blocked the kitchen from view but did nothing to dampen the sound. The argument was focused on blame, finger pointing, who was going to be in trouble, and who had dropped the ball by not getting us drinks.

And we still didn’t have any water. They were too busy fighting over who should have been helping the customer to actually bother to help the customer.

Mistakes happen, things get overlooked, processes fail, the customer / end user does something unexpected or unanticipated, etc. etc. What happens next tells me a lot about the company, the employees, and your leadership abilities. In the event things don’t go right, do your employees: 1) solve the immediate problem; 2) solve the immediate problem and then fix the underlying issue so it doesn’t happen again; or 3) make sure they don’t get blamed for it?

why did you bother?

Why did you bother advertising to get me in the door if you were going to treat me like you didn’t care?

Why did you work so hard to build up a brand image if you were going to negate all that effort with two brief interactions?

Why do you confuse “not openly hostile” for “pleasant customer service”?

Why do you choose to not use every touch point as a way to build and strengthen my interest and loyalty?

Why should I care about you on Facebook, Twitter, etc. when your employees can’t bother to care about me when I’m in front of them?

Why do you try so hard to build up imaginary signs of customer interest (how many “likes” does it take to equal a sale, how many followers create a profit?) and then not try at all when you have an interested customer right in your store?

Why do waste so much effort in getting me to reach out to you when you can’t be bothered to call me and tell me the service is done / my part has arrived / your serviceperson will arrive very soon / etc.? The two minutes it takes you to call is tremendously helpful to me. Or, you could keep me guessing, wondering, frustrated, irritated, and developing a negative attitude toward your company.

But that’s not a problem, because you have a new advertising campaign coming out, right? You’re spending more on social media. You use the word “branding” a lot. So you’re fine.

Meanwhile, I’ll be down the street giving my money to your competition.

Why did you bother?

make it pretty, make it exceptional, make it extraordinary

“Hand me that drill again, I want to make this pretty.”

Yesterday, I got my first filling. The dentist had already drilled the cavity and was about to do the filling, but something had caught his eye. As he took the drill from his assistant, he said to me, “This is just for me, no one will ever see it.” Then he corrected the minor detail he’d seen.

At that moment, I knew he was my favorite dentist and I’d happily recommend him to others. He is a craftsman. Someone who cares enough to do the job right, even when he’s the only one who will know the difference.

Would I have known if he didn’t “make it pretty”? Nope. Isn’t good enough good enough? Why waste time on details that don’t matter? Hold on there, I never said the details don’t matter, only that I wouldn’t know the difference.

What if he hadn’t drilled more? What if he had said, “Yeah, I think that’s good enough. No one will ever see it.”

I read an article about Steve Jobs a few months back that talked about how he obsessed with making the inside of the computer as simple and elegant as the outside. When you worry about the things no one will ever see, is it any surprise that what they do see is exceptional?

Being the craftsman, approaching it from a mastery standard, making the unseen as elegant as the seen often takes little to no more time. And you never have to worry about having to go back in and do it again. You never have to worry if it’s “good enough”. In fact, it takes a lot more time and energy to do something to the bare minimum standard and have to keep reworking it to get it good enough than to just do it right from the very start.

This applies to all jobs. A couple years back I bought a new-ish car from a dealer and ended up in a knock-down-drag-out negotiation over whether or not the dealer would provide us with a second key. If they are willing to cut corners and kill the customer experience over a key, where else are they cutting corners that I can’t see?

There’s a great lesson here: they eventually gave in and gave us a key, but it took so much effort that I’m still bitter two years later and will never, ever, not even at gunpoint buy from them again. Like the dentist, it would have taken no more effort to do it right (less even) for the sake of doing it right than to do it poorly to see how much they can get away with. They could have made it a great experience and would have made more money off of goodwill, referrals, and the opportunity to sell me another car. But they chose not to. And it still cost them the key.

It really comes down to taking pride in your work, all of your work. People usually won’t notice when something is done above and beyond right, but they will notice when it isn’t. Would you notice that all the staples in a document packet were aligned the same? No, but you would notice if the documents had been stapled and re-stapled, if the ends of the staples snag your hands, or if the document had so many holes in the corner it looked like it had been mauled by an angry badger. Silly example, but very true.

What’s this look like at your job? How quickly do you return calls? How thorough and well written are your emails? How prepared are you for meetings? Do you treat your customers like you would want to be treated? Do you smile and say hello to everyone? Do you help out those who aren’t in a position to return the favor? Do you try to be exceptional or do you try to get by?

The people and companies that get this are the ones that really stand out. Those that don’t tend to be the ones wondering why they don’t get ahead.

Little things matter. Good enough isn’t.

do robot overlords have more fun?

Why is FUN at work so taboo? What is so bad about enjoying our time and our days. I’m a big fan of the “Fun is Good” approach by Mike Veeck. Mike has managed to create a unique and successful business with the philosophy that when employees have fun they are more engaged, work harder, and provide superior customer service. When employees have fun, customers have fun. When customers have fun they tell people and come back.

A cornerstone to his approach is the idea that, although they don’t take themselves very seriously, they take their business very seriously. How unique, different, and refreshing is that? I’m a big fan of businesses (and people) willing to be different and authentically stand apart. I’ve previously written on: playing it safe is too risky, vanilla passion, and fear of a human business (the freak flag advantage) so I won’t spend too much time on it here.

This weekend, while playing around on ebay I came across a business willing to have fun and stand apart, yet be laser focused on the business. I know nothing about the business other than what they posted in their auction, I have no idea if they back it up or not, but I REALLY respect their approach.

Lotus of Portland is selling a 2011 Lotus Elise in “chrome orange”. I don’t know how long the auction will be up, but you can see it here. The ad reads (in part):

This is our very last NEW Elise. Lotus is no longer making these!

You know what this 2011 Lotus Elise SC in Chrome Orange doesn’t have? Navigation. Sure you could add one. But ask yourself this: don’t cars do too much for us already? Cushy heated 74-way adjustable powered seats with memory for eight people and lower lumbar support, 34-speaker Bose Kardon theater surround sound with 3D center screen technology, more than one cup holder… they all isolate the driver, you, from the experience and thrill of driving.

You know what this Elise SC does have? The Touring Pack, Lifestyle Paint, hard top, and Star Shield. Also available as standard equipment is an absolute zero-likelihood that this will turn against you in the inevitable global robot uprising. Sure, we’ve been enslaving our robot companions for almost a century, and it’s a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’ before our iPods™, Roombas®, and Swiffer WetJets force us to do their insidious mechanical bidding. But rest assured that your Lotus will still obey your every command during the Robocalypse.

And when that day comes we, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

 

It finishes with:

Lotus of Portland is Oregon’s only official Lotus dealership and service center. We have one goal: Simply to be the best Lotus dealership in America.

Focusing on the guiding principles of Lotus, we keep everything as uncomplicated as possible for the greatest in speed and performance. You will deal with only one person from start to finish and you will receive the best car buying experience of your life. Anything less is unacceptable. Resistance is futile

This is a $60k sports car and they’re trying to sell it by going on about robot overlords? Hilarious. They’ve taken the possible negative of a bare bones sports car with no luxury (and few standard) features a and a radioactive paint color and turned it into a funny and eye catching positive. Would this work in a luxury car ad? Nope. But anyone excited about dropping that much money into an impractical car that SCREAMS “LOOK AT ME, ME, ME!” probably has a sense of humor about things. (Yes, I want one and I want to buy it from them. Unfortunately, I’m a few bucks short this week…)

Then they draw a big line in the sand about with a bold claim about how seriously they take their customer’s business. They tell us that anything less than the best car buying experience of our lives is unacceptable. Average, vanilla dealership for the masses? Um, no. And thank goodness.

Again, I have NO experience with them and don’t know how well they back up their claims, but I love their stance. It makes me realize just how much bigger I need to be playing in my own job. Bring on the fun!

 

descent // death spiral

Profit equals revenue minus expenses. To increase profits you can increase revenue, reduce expenses, or both. Any savvy business strives to be fiscally responsible and keep a close eye on expenses. However, it is possible to cut the wrong expenses and save money right into bankruptcy.

As a regular customer, I have a front row seat watching a formerly solid corner store / gas station implode under the management of new owners. It’s sad, but they are providing a nice case study on how to run a successful business right into the ground. Some things you might want to avoid doing in your own business:

Ask the long-time manager to take a 50% pay cut. Get a new manager willing to accept management responsibility for a shade over minimum wage.  Instead of paying staff well, “save” money by hiring and training new employees who lack the skills, experience, or options to command a living wage. Ignore the cost of excessively high turnover and horrendously poor customer service.

Assume employees are interchangeable and replaceable and treat them poorly. Refuse to realize that in a small community the your customers are friends and family of your employees. Don’t notice how a negative reputation is rapidly spreading throughout the area. Don’t keep shelves stocked, even when the items are clearly sitting in inventory in the back room.

Defer maintenance and repairs. Instead, just hang “out of order” signs on everything that doesn’t work.

Irritate your vendors by not paying them reliably and / or don’t restock key items to save a few dollars. For example: be the only gas station in the area going into the weekend without gas.

Create a noticeable drop in both the number of customers, the number of regular customers, and the sales per customer.

As sales and revenue drop at avalanche speed, accelerate your savings by cutting employee hours so you are perpetually understaffed, allowing more items to be out of stock, and perhaps becoming even slower to pay your vendors.

It’s a neat cycle: the more corners you cut to save money, the lower your customer service drops, the fewer the customers you have and the more corners you need to cut to save money. Repeat until annihilation.

your customers know, do you?

I was recently reminded (yet again) of the importance of experiencing our systems and processes from the customer’s perspective. Of really understanding the customer experience.

We think we know what our customer goes through, we design our processes and systems to serve them. After all, we use the process all the time. The challenge is that we know how it is supposed to work, we know all its subtleties and nuances, AND we know the shortcuts. In many cases, we never experience the systems and processes we require our customers to use.

A quick example from my own life. A minor part of my job is overseeing a small company library. Employees can find a book on our computer system, check it out, and it will be sent to them via interoffice mail.

So here’s my embarrassing confession. For all my harping on the world about the need for great customer service, I have apparently never actually used the system to check out a book. As the library is 20 feet from my office it almost seems silly to go through the whole process. Instead of going through the whole process, I’d just go grab a book and mark it checked out in the system..

Then, while fixing a minor glitch, I decided to see the whole process from the customer’s point of view. I discovered that the automated emails they received when checking out a book made absolutely no sense. The emails were based on templates used to sign up for classes so they had statements like: Your supervisor has approved you to attend The Strategy Book. Ugh! Their supervisor had nothing to do with it and they weren’t going to attend a book. Fail.

It has been corrected, but it really bothers me because I know better. I know to routinely test processes. But I didn’t. It’s an important reminder that the little things really, really matter.

Think about it:

  • When was the last time you applied at your company, set up benefits, tried to change important personal information? Not using your administrator rights, but the way an actual applicant or employee would?
  • When was the last time you experienced the sales process from start to finish? Not just your part, but right up to when the customer has it in hand. Have you ever tried dealing with your own customer service or returns departments?
  • When was the last time you tried to become a customer of your company? What barriers made it more difficult than it should be?

The only way to find the roadblocks, weirdness, and hassles is to go experience it ourselves. My own situation was minor, but served as a reminder that the only way you’re really going to discover the little things is to experience the process, not as the customer is supposed to, but how the customer actually does.

 

tale of two burritos

Customer service makes or breaks a business and good enough just isn’t. This weekend, I ended up having burritos from two competing franchises. Let’s call them Good Burrito and Better Burrito. Both offer super fresh ingredients, make them with specifically the ingredients and toppings you ask for, are pretty quick, and are very tasty. I never really thought about the differences until sampling them back to back.

Good Burrito asked what toppings I wanted and shuffled me from person to person as the burrito moved down the line. By the end of the line, three different people had contributed to my dinner. Henry Ford would be proud of the assembly line efficiency. Better Burrito had one person who put my food together and what a difference that one person made.

Supergregarious, he seemed to truly be interested in my day. How was my Saturday going, was I working or off, where did I work, did I like it there? When adding ingredients he’d brag on them a little: These vegetables are great, we cook them with… You can’t go wrong with that salsa, it’s great on everything…

A couple of important points. This took NO MORE time, in fact it was probably quicker because I didn’t have to repeat what I wanted like I did when getting passed from person to person at Good Burrito. He never got bogged down in the conversation. I never felt like I was being interrogated. It never felt fake or forced. Instead he gave the impression that he was really interested in my day and in making me the perfect burrito.

Then when I got to the register to pay I asked to get a brownie. The woman at the register (also superfriendly) said, “Let me find you a good one. They put the old ones on top.” And she dug through the basket until she found one. It looked like all the others, but she proclaimed it worthy. When I decided to get a brownie to take home for my wife, she dug through the basket again.

Here’s the most important point: Whether they cared about me, my day, and my lunch doesn’t matter. What matters is that they made me feel like they did. It took no more time, cost no more money, and made all the difference.

The HR and business lessons I take from this:

Hire right! Here’s the secret to hiring people: hire people who give a damn. Nothing else matters unless they care. If they care, the rest is largely irrelevant.  I’ll take under qualified people who care over qualified but apathetic people any day. Qualified and they give a damn? Score! I suspect that the guy making my burrito was following a semi-scripted patter. But he was so fluid and did it so well that it came across as very authentic. And, he was clearly a very outgoing person and a good fit for a customer facing role. The woman at the register went out of her way to find a good brownie. It’s hard to train people to care or go above and beyond. Much easier to hire for it.

Train right. Again, I suspect that much of it was patter, but done so well it felt natural, not forced. That requires a lot of practice, role playing, feedback, more practice, etc.

Think twice about your dress code. Employees at both places were clean and well groomed. Except that the three workers I saw at Better Burrito had long hair (male), blond dreadlocks (female), purple hair (female), and a heavy emphasis on tattoos and face piercings. And they were supernice, not too cool for you, not angsty, not indifferent. Let’s see, person who gives a damn and has nose rings or one who is unpierced and indifferent? Hmmm, easy choice.

Sustained business performance requires great customer service. Great customer services requires great people. Great people requires an intense focus on hiring right and training well. That requires leadership that truly gets the DIRECT connection between people and performance.

The final lesson? Great customer service trounces good customer service every time. Good enough customer service never is.

no more surprises

Nobody likes to be surprised by bad news. Surprises can be a career limiting event. From this day forward, do all in your humanly power to make sure that two types of people are never, ever surprised:

1. Your boss. Your job is to make your manager’s life easier. The #1 way to make their life (and your life) more difficult is for them to be surprised or blindsided by what you have done or not done. We will all make mistakes and drop the ball from time to time and the first step to retribution is making sure your boss isn’t surprised.

2. Your customers. Your job is to make your customer’s life easier. Nobody buys from someone who makes their life more difficult. Surprises make things difficult. Changes happen, there are things outside our control. Customers are far, far more forgiving if they know about potential issues in advance. Delivering bad news in advance is difficult, but letting them call to complain after being surprised by bad news is a far more challenging situation.