No one wants our business.

What do a pediatrician’s office, a boutique and a mega communications corporation have in common? No one wants our business.



Isn't it comforting to know there are companies out there in this day and time that do not need business. On two consecutive days, during business hours, voicemail messages were left at our pediatrician’s office and an upscale boutique. Here we are 7 days later and still no return phone calls from anyone.


The absolute best is the new U-Verse from AT&T, after searching for quite a while we finally found a phone number to call to ask questions, we were ready to order. Understand U-Verse is being widely advertised on television and via mailings to us and after 30 minutes on the phone with them, an appointment was scheduled to make the switch. We were ready and happy to pay them about $1800 less annually than our current provider, we were going for the entire package.


Then the follow up call came from the installation support group. It was to confirm our address – makes sense if it wasn't AT&T who has been sending us four bills a month for four phone lines for over 21 years at the same address. The need to confirm our address was explained poorly and defensively by this employee. If we could not confirm that we were either NW or NE they could not do the install, and if we could not tell them, it would take them at least 3 days to figure it out. THREE days in this day and time and our street address is the ONLY street by its name in our city!


The original appointment had been set by a friendly and thorough person and was less than 36 hours away. The installation support call ended with my husband kindly suggesting that when they finally found us on a map, then please call us to reschedule the appointment. We have not heard back from AT&T U-Verse since then. Not only have they lost our business, they wasted a lot of employee man-hours with unbelievable incompetence. And if any of you out there want to forward this on to someone you know at AT&T -- be my guest.



Any lessons here for you? Consider these questions –



* What systems do you have in place to make certain calls are returned? If an employee does not take ownership, then create technology to keep your customers from falling through the cracks.
* How much damage occurs when one employee undermines the goodwill or even the “sale” of another employee?
* Do your employees know the importance of a timely, responsive return call?





The only reason a business exists is to service and sell a customer. This experience does cause me to wonder how the pediatrician’s office handles emergency messages. Thankfully my call was to book a non-life threatening appointment. My messages for the boutique were simply to check on an item in a certain size, not a life threatening matter either. However I am a customer who has left two messages and deserve the courtesy of a call.



It seems so simple – call your customer back. Must not be as simple as I think because 7 days later, we are still waiting for the phone to ring.

Hire Smart to Start

After speaking to a customer service representative on the phone, I was reminded of one of my hiring tips. I know some of you reading this would love to be hiring right now and not shrinking your staff. But when hiring is back on your agenda, make certain you get the best possible employees. Here is my laundry list for hiring smart to start –



Hire the attitude. You can do that by the use of behavioral interviewing which I hope is pretty much the standard for your hiring practices. Ask questions to get at how this candidate will behave not just what they have done.
Pose specific customer situations and get their opinion on how they would handle it.



When you are down to the last few candidates, bring them in and have them observe the job. Give them real life experience of your specific job expectations. This will give other team members a chance to react to them. Use those team members in the final selection process. The more current team members are involved in hiring, better the chance that new employee will get on board faster.



Tell them the good, the bad and the ugly. Give the candidate the real story about working at your company. No surprises are a good thing and can minimize turnover. You don’t want a great new employee to have buyer’s remorse.



Do some of the interview on the phone. This is the hiring tip I referenced at the beginning of this. Most of your "customer facing" team members spend quite a bit of time on the phone. Test your candidate with a call to hear their “phone voice”.

When one on one you have the advantage of the entire package - the smile, eye contact, gestures and posture. Those can make a great difference in how this person is perceived. However none of that is available when on the phone. So call them, listen closely and think how that voice and tone would represent your organization. I find most companies do not practice this as a hiring technique. Use it and you will stand apart from your competitors.





Hiring is easy, getting the right person is not so easy. Take your time, involve others, get creative, use your gut and you might just “get lucky”..

Final questions can build customer loyalty .

I recently stopped using a service that was getting $984 annually from me for the last 7 years. I called the local office to check on cancellation procedures and discovered it was amazingly simple. I was told just don’t pay the next monthly invoice.



Here is the really amazing part – the manager did not make any attempt to salvage my business. There was no inquiry of, “Can I ask what is causing you to….” or “What can we do to keep you as a customer?” After that first call, I stopped by the office to get my final bill to show the account was closed. Once again, the manager missed an opportunity to do an exit interview.



It would have been very simple to just ask – “Since we are always looking for ways to improve our service, what is the one thing we could have done differently to make that a better experience for you?” Or how about a polite, “Mrs. Ford, we do appreciate your business for these last 7 years. We will be happy to serve you again in the future if your needs change.”



It is easy to blame the economy as the reason customers are leaving. Stop assuming and find out the real reasons for customer loss. Your questions, show an interest and appreciation that may keep their loyalty. You may certainly gain valuable information to improve your business. My lifetime value was $6,888. Aren't a few questions worth that? Now is the time to start asking more questions. Prepare your final questions and you may create some new beginnings.

Where is the Leadership for Customer Focus?

The most frequent question I get from clients is how do we get our people to do something differently tomorrow. They are asking about getting better execution from their top leaders, managers and front line teams. The executives have spoken of service excellence at many meetings and yet they still don’t see implementation. Or they see too much variability and not enough accountability. Eventually it always ends up the same, some people get it and others don’t. Here are three thoughts –


Start the hard-wiring process. Do this by creating metrics. Most of you have plenty of numbers but is anyone really “owning” the data. Publish your current status. Tracking and sharing the information can make a difference. A roadmap is needed but you have to start with “where are we” to move forward.


Make someone responsible. Who will be the champion? This goes back to someone owning the customer focus. The champion needs to look at the metrics as well as hiring, training, service standards, performance evaluations, coaching processes and empowerment issues. Nothing will happen until all processes are aligned with the desired customer focus.


Create service standards. As I have said to many audiences, “Without service standards everything is left to chance.” Do people know what is expected?


Exceptional customer service does not happen by just talking about it. What will you do differently tomorrow to create a culture of service?

Little things matter. Make a service experience memorable.

A few service experiences in the last few days remind me how the little things matter. My daughter and were I shopping at Target and had a 44 pound bag of dog food loaded on the bottom rack of the buggy. As we were cruising down the aisle, it started to slide a bit forward and drag the ground. We both leaned over to push and shove it back when an employee stopped what he was doing and took care of the shoving for us. It was such a simple thing but memorable.



An incident at Panera Bread Company caught my attention also. I had waited in the line and had money counted out for my iced tea. I stop often so I knew $1.92 was what I owed. Much to my surprise the price had gone up by a few pennies so I start to fumble for the additional money. The employee was quick to take my $1.92 and asked that I not give him the additional. He said he appreciated me making Panera a regular stop and wanted me to enjoy my tea one more time at the old price. Again simple and memorable.



Too often team members do not take such action. They are very much aware of the customer’s need yet do nothing about it. So many have the ability to look through us, “appear busy” and ignore our plight. It is usually a well- rehearsed act. Most service continues to be mediocre at best.



For those of you in leadership, what are you doing to inspire your team members to serve at such a caring level? Are you making it clear that this level of service is expected? Are you rewarding exceptional service when you see it or hear about it? Most of this doesn’t happen by magically motivated employees, leaders must be dedicated to creating a culture of service excellence.



Little things matter.