Customer Service - The Pedestal Group

A “Fun” Competition

Anyone who knows me knows I am all about having fun. Having a meeting? Do something to make it fun. Balloons are fun – colors are fun – don’t just be boring and “professional”. A person can be both! Today, my husband sent me a link to The Fun Theory. These experiments are part of a contest to find ways to change behavior through fun sponsored by Volkwagen. And what great ideas they are so far! One covers a staircase in material that turns it into a piano. They showed a huge increase in people taking the stairs just to play music. And the thing is, not everyone who took the stairs showed any reaction. They just walked up the stairs as if it were normal that music came out. But, they still took the stairs.

The other one I watched had a noice maker installed in a garbage can so that when you threw something away, it sounded like it fell for miles. The great result of this one was people looked around for trash to throw in it! Not only did this encourage people to get the trash in the trash bin, but also to clean up the park around it!

So what can you do in your business to make it fun? In presentations do you tell funny stories? If you have to complete large forms, is there a funny part hidden in it somewhere? (I know a person who put a clause in every contract he ever wrote that said, “if you find this and call me to discuss it, I will pay yuo $150”. The bummer thing is no one ever called!) What is the part of your process your customers hate? Everyone has one. What can you do to make it fun?

Find the Signals

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On 7/30 Fritz, my dog, graced us with his Top 10 Management Tips. Fritz and I spend a lot of time together and I am routinely amazed at what he knows and does. I have always (foolishly) considered myself to be the provider and Fritz to be the customer but I realized this morning, I have that backwards. Fritz is a classic small business executive!

This morning, as usual, I started to close a phone call and Fritz was sitting up, ready to go play / walk / do something. Since we have only worked together for nine months, I was surprised at how quickly I came to expect this behavior. But from Fritz’s perspective, how did he learn what the end of a phone call sounded like? He can’t understand the words and he certainly doesn’t understand what that black thing that is constantly near mom’s head is, so how did he learn? HE OBSERVED. He knew what he wanted (my attention) and he observed what happens right before he could get it. Now he also did experiments – climbing up my chair at various intervals – but he quickly learned that the black thing took precedence. But he also learned over time that there was a certain cadence to my voice as I wrap up a call. “Great! Talk to you soon! Bye” translates to “now I can pay attention Fritz” in his mind.

Okay – that’s all nice Kath, but so what? Well, if you are a small business owner, it is a good bet you don’t have a magic mirror that lets you see into your customer’s operations. You don’t know what they are doing when they finally pay attention to you. So what can you observe? What can you take from Fritz and use yourself to learn how to be ready just at that moment the customer has to choose to make another phone call or pay attention to you? How can you be sitting up ready to play?

The advantage you hold is your ability to communicate. Fritz can’t ask me “what is that black thing and why do you care?” but you can. Talk to your customers about how they made the decision to come to you. How did they remember you were the solution to their problem? What trigger led them to notice you were ready to play?

Think about it, call your customers, try some experiments. For me, well, it is time to go throw the toy in the yard.

Sending Clients to the Circus

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Let me just go on record – I hate jumping through hoops. I’m not very athletic and grace is definitely not my middle name so I never learned the art. So last week when I went to a certain motor club’s website to try to figure out if and where we would vacation this year (won’t say who, but their first name starts with A, their middle name starts with A and their last name starts with A), I was surprised when I got a message that my membership ID wasn’t valid. I sent an email to their “contact us” section which is apparently motor club speak for “black hole”. Today, I tried calling. Suddenly I was in some weird fairy tale – the first lady didn’t know anything. The second lady knew I had the wrong website (oh silly me – www.aaa.com was WRONG) but didn’t know the right one. The third lady knew the right site. Yay. Went back to the site, tried to download travel books, can’t. No error to speak of so I couldn’t troubleshoot, just click on the button and get a page that at the top says “You are already logged in” and below has a login box. Huh???

At the end of the day, I will get over this and somehow get what I want. And if previous interactions are any indications, will receive my order very quickly. But for this morning, I wasted a lot of time jumping through hoops for no obvious reason. Now if someone does follow up on the “survey” I took and expressed my concerns, that would be great and I will renew next year. But if they don’t, I will certainly think very hard before renewing.

So what does it all mean? I’m confident that internally there are great reasons this all happened. It makes total sense to someone at AAA that their main website doesn’t have a way to route users to the proper state site and / or could at least communicate in some obvious way that there are state sites. I really don’t care if they are all independently owned, franchises, or something else. I just want a good customer experience. What about your customers? What happens when they go to your website? What if there is a problem – do they just get a big “404 error” or have you customized that to give better information (did you know you could customize that page)? Help your customers have a great experience so they come back again and again. Make your contact information easy to find. Make sure what they want is obvious. Don’t make them jump through hoops like the trained dog at the circus – because your customers don’t come back just for a treat.