Customer service is not customer experience

Totally right -- the people can be great, but the issues can remain completely unsolved

In my many travels through the concentric circles of hell that dealing with Verizon spans, the people were unfailingly professional, helpful, patient and, unfortunately, unable to harness any organizational strategy or tactics to address pretty basic issues. Not their fault.

Hi -

I wanted to share a similar experience. I am a very frugal person; however, I treated myself recently to a pair of high-end dress jeans for $179 at a store in Washington DC called the Denim Bar. (Evil place - do not go there.)

The first time I put them on at home, a belt loop ripped; the so-called "stylish," distressed look of the jeans made the fabric so insecure that the belt loops would not hold.

When I took the jeans back, I was very polite to the (looked like she was 12 years old) sales girl - the same one who had helped me buy the jeans and who had said, and I quote, "If you have ANY problems at all, let us know."

I would say a busted beltloop on a pair of nearly $200 jeans is a PROBLEM. Especially when I am not a seamstress able to fix it.

I said they were defective and would like my money back. No go. The sales girl got very snappy with me, saying they couldn't do that, and that I could exchange them (and as she put it, "I think we are being very generous to offer you that - what's your problem?") - however, they did not have anything in my size/style at that time, and wouldn't for at least 2 weeks. Meanwhile, she gets the manager, also 12, who told me that I shouldn't "hitch my jeans up by the beltloops" and went on to insinuate that I was dumb for not knowing this.

Oh, he also then began playing Playstation on a big TV they have above their cash register.

AND, when I reminded the gal that she had said to let them know if I had any problems, she replied, "I would not say something like that," as the manager nodded behind her.

I have been wearing jeans all my life and have NEVER had a beltloop rip - certainly not on an expensive pair.

The experience was so bad I almost walked out of there with no jeans at all, simply to make the point that their service was awful and I did not appreciate being ganged up on and treated like an idiot. Because I dreaded having to go back there in two weeks to shop all over again, I finally convinced them to fix the jeans, no charge (and the salesgirl was very grumpy about that too).

Bottom line, I thought the service would reflect the high-end nature of the store. No way. They were extremely inflexible, immature and rude. If I didn't ahve to pick up my (hopefully repaired) jeans I would never step foot in there again.

- Larua Boswell, Washington, DC

Mark, You got it the wrong way around. Customer Experience is NOT Customer Service - but customer service is certainly an extremely important part of customer experience.

In banking, our research shows that customer service accounts for nearly 40% of the customer's assessment of whether we deliver a positive experience. Hardly the 'tiniest sliver' as you suggest!

At your service, David McQuillen, Credit Suisse

I go to a little pizza place in Brookline called the Upper Crust. Some say it's the best pizza in the country. Twice I've called in my order, and they lost it, or failed ot write it down, and then still just put my make-up order in the back of the line with everybody else's. While this infuriates me, I will continue to go there because the pizza is so good.

My point is a business can have a great product or service and lousy customer experience and be successful, but great customer service and lousy product ultimately fails.

I had s similar experience just yesterday with Buy.com. In September, I ordered a digital camera and printer together to get a $50 rebate. Both items were shown in stock, so I thought it was a safe "bet". However, a few weeks went past with no printer, so I emailed customer service that I was concerned that the rebate would expire before I got the printer. I was assured they would honor the rebate if it expired, so I felt pretty safe.

More weeks went past and no printer. Then Buy.com started selling the replacement model of the printer. Uh oh! The old printer may never be available, so I emailed customer service again asking for them to send the replacement printer and honor the rebate as they said they would. "Sorry", they said, "the rebate offer is only valid on the printer your ordered." I sent several more emails explaining that all I wanted was an equitable solution and that I would pay the $5 extra that the new printer cost over the old one.

I got several more canned responses, so I asked for a phone number. They gave me one and I called. After being on hold for a long time, I spoke with a representative who told me they couldn't do anything for me. I asked to speak with a supervisor and was told that they would not be there for another hour and a half (it was 10:30 am EST).

So I called back and was told that they had a "policy" not to do anything like I was asking. I explained the situation from several perspectives and was told again and again that their "policy" would not allow that. That led me to explain that I had a policy, too, which was to not do business with firms whose policies got in the way of serving the customer.

This all prompted me to look up the CEO of Buy.com at the SEC's web site and send him a note explaining that they had lost a customer due to their policy and that they may want to look into modifying that policy before more customers leave.

I am not waiting by the mailbox for a response. They probably have a policy about letters to the CEO that prevents that as well.

As I read the customer service vs. experience article, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own web-based company’s efforts to establish policy that results in a good customer experience, yet protects our company.

This type of article seems to be drawing out the “get a load of my bad experience” stories, and I hope that we’ll see more business-side perspectives.

My company sells spring break travel packages to college students – that one week in March where MTV and students alike flock to places like Cancun, Jamaica, Bahamas, and Florida.

Our company has a difficult task regarding the goal of best customer experience. Our customer base is 18-21 year olds – essentially first-time consumers. They often pay with starter checks, their first credit card, or their parent’s credit card. They are adults, yet many of them do not have any real-world consumer experience from which to determine what is “reasonable” to expect and what is unreasonable.

Example:

1)Student books an international travel package.
2)Our company secures the purchase with suppliers (airlines, hotels, etc) that often require full non-refundable payments – especially when booking close to departure.
3)Student reads an article on the MTV website and decides they want to go to Acapulco instead of Jamaica. They call and demand to change their trip.

In this particular instance, it may be clear to anyone with real-world consumer, or business, experience that such a change can not be permitted. The simple student response of “you can just sell my old trip to someone else” does not hold water.

Nonetheless, we want all of our student customers to have a good experience. Part of that good experience, however, develops from a learning process during the transaction on our website – providing clear instructions as to what is being purchased and what implications that holds, and not submitting it to the user in a single 75-page scroll-box of terms & conditions.

Nonetheless, we have parents of sunburned travelers that accuse us of not properly warning their children (?) of the strength of the sun (we do warn them at on-site orientation and in printed material they receive before travel). We have students that go to the airport without proper travel documentation (ie Passport) and are not permitted to board the plane, then blame our company (via a chargeback) that we didn’t properly inform them what documentation was necessary to travel (we do). The list of crazy situations/excuses is as long as my arm.

But these people represent a small fraction of customers, and although we still need to “protect” our company from them, we choose not to develop overly-restrictive policies that harm the customer experience of the larger mass of “reasonable” customers.

My overall point is that each market has its intrinsic qualities that need to be considered when developing policies that affect customer experience. Ours is a first-time consumer that is often unreasonable for no other reason than their inexperience in the marketplace. Another company may be dealing with the elderly that can’t accept a furniture delivery via truck at their street side (with no option to have it moved inside). And so on.

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening (choose one) Mark,

I've been an avid reader of your mailing for quite some time. Kudos on such an excellent compilation!

The Customer Service and Customer Experience issue really hit home for me. By and large I agree with your comments. I have a somewhat different perspective to offer.

I worked for many years in a prior life as a Field Service Engineer for many computer manufacturer and service organizations (DEC, CDC, IBM...). Many of these companies referred to us as Customer Engineers owing in large part to how we service the customer as well as the equipment. This was true so much so that a manager I had worked for at DEC (the best I've had the pleasure of working for to date, BTW) once told me that the primary focus of the engineer should always be the customer, then the equipment. How wise! By attending to the customer, I would always learn more about the problem at hand, be far more effective in providing the solutions that s/he was looking for, and always left with a far greater understanding and appreciation for every aspect of the client's requirements and goals. I had no idea at the time that I was in many ways performing such ethnocentric activity as a true apprenticeship model contextual inquiry and observation. The same manager was firm on doing what was right for the customer, and would endow all his engineers with the authority to make such decisions in the field.

Most of us that have worked in the Human Factors and Usabilty realms knows the importance in "knowing thy user", but in today's world Customer Service often times places too little emphasis on taking the time to understand the problem from both etic and emic perspectives. CSR's find themselves under the gun to play "beat the clock" so their metrics remain acceptable to their management. How unfortunate if customer satisfaction (and eventually your clients) begin to erode and disappear.

So Customer Service is not Customer Experience? To borrow an industry phrase..."It depends" ;)

There are so many problems with buying online that I've moved away from the medium for anything that can break or might need returning.

1) Each site has different policies and procedures (so I never know what will happen when I try to pay).
2) Shipping is an opaque side effect that I find out about after I've decided to purchase, and sometimes is up to 50% of the price of the product.
3) If something goes wrong with the product, you can't walk in and bring it back, instead you have to get online and work the system.
4) Some of the procedures require me to be at home to receive shipment (especially in the UK) and getting the shipment diverted becomes difficult.

However, I love ordering books from Amazon, since the only thing that goes wrong is the book doesn't ship. I never have to return the book, and if I don't receive it, I cancel the order.

Right on! I don't know which is more tragic:

A. When the customer service folks are kind, trying to be helpful and are frustrated by their own organizational policies and inabilty to create a great customer experience ("I wish I could help you, but I'm trapped in our organizational hell")

or

B. When the customer service folks are kind, trying to be helpful and don't question their organization's ridiculous policies and wonder why you're frustrated. ("Those are the rules, why are you getting bent out of shape?")

I think maybe the latter, B, since these folks may never know what a good experience is, so they can't reach for it or hope for it.

So I'd suggest that this really varies by channel. In a bricks and mortar retail setting (or in banking, as David mentions) customer service and store design play a huge role in creating the overall customer experience -- moreso, in some cases, than the products sold do.

On the Web, however, live customer service may obviously be that "tiniest sliver" of overall experience that you mention, but that's because the site is essentially playing the same role that store design and customer service play in a traditional retail store. If my online experience is a great one, then I often have no need to interact with customer service, and it never becomes part of my experience.

Mark,

I get where you’re coming from, but I partly disagree with your assertions here.

You wrote: “Customer service is the job of front-line workers, servicing customer requests for help - via an 800 number, e-mail, or a retail desk.”

This really surprised me! As many will attest, Customer Service involves a heckuva lot more than customer-facing. It is **not** merely the job of front-line workers. Customer Service *begins* with the policies that govern the management of customer need. Customer Service policies are responsible for shaping customer interfacing *and* service delivery which work bi-directionally across the supply chain – impacting the suppliers who ship faulty goods as well as the service reps we encounter.

While your problem wasn’t a Customer Service **environment or interfacing** problem (accessing service within the phone channel, or talking to the rep), it was very much a Customer Service **platform** issue (related to people, process, technology and/or policy).

You’re right that there is a larger cast of characters responsible for hosing up your file cabinet experience. The CEO and executives **own** Customer Service – and are therefore stewards of your experience. However, that doesn’t change the fact that your problem was a deeply rooted *Customer Service* problem.

Customer Service is perhaps the most important aspect of Customer Experience. While the two are not the same – they are so strongly, perceptually bound in the minds of customers they can often equated as such.

Nordstrom knows this. Customer Service is not merely about the people they hire and train – it’s about the holistic customer service experience they offer, from the products they offer, the channels they can be purchased within, and the policies that govern service delivery and customer satisfaction. Customer Service has created the Nordstrom’s experience – and has deeply shaped the Customer Experience.

It very much a Customer Service issue to have service policies that under service customers or enable the delivery of poor quality or faulty merchandise, and hopefully this business will learn.

Just my .02 cents… Thanks as usual for thought provoking material.

Leigh
www.livepath.net

Mark,

Why not name the office supply company and the product specifically in your post?

They should be associated with the results of their decisions, not left unlabelled -- others might suffer the same problem that you encountered.

TTFN
Travis

Good point. Word of mouth, aka viral marketing, can make you or break you these days. Strangely, I work for a large gov't entitiy who recently spent major $$$ on sending employees to Customer Service training - a huge step for gov't, but management missed the point hugely. The 'product' still sucks, and any effect that the (decent enough) training made has been lost. Of course, when you're the only game in town ... I digress. To me, I think an end-to-end system checking process would be useful, with the full involvment of each element in the process.

Press 4 to reach the O....perator (arggh) - I am on hold and my wait time could be up to 15 minutes, really...

I've written letters, I've complained - there is something in our nature as consultants to feel especially bad when there is a business disconnect - but this problem can be a source of revenues for those of use in the experience design business.

The idea of moments of truth, hassle free returns, the concept of the customer life cycle (market/sell/serve) the idea that service is one of the competitive levers (price/service/quality.) have been on conference agendas forever (or at least since 1986 - multichannel business will motivate reexamination - thinking interms of experience and storyboarding are great tools - This is a business prospect, they've silo'd service, that's low hanging fruit, Mark, call the CEO and sell an engagement (a familiar approach in the retail consulting business that will keep you busy - if that is what you are into.)

The end game for all of this is the idea of agency (Thanks to Don Gilbert - a great retail mind who was a leader at the National Retail Federation) It's deserves to be a separate piece but simply put: the retailer has an agent relationship with the customer and as agent represents the customers interests period. that sounds like customer centricity/human centered/etc doesn't it

as doing business on the web matures, the office supply company will either die or evolve beyond selling products without service (or solutions, or experience, or meaning etc)

One has to wonder where all the devil customers from Office Depot are going (think Best Buy/Seldon)

Even with a service policy there will still be geographic variability - that's why good service yields high market cap - it takes leadership that converts to a culture yatta yatta

Idea: intentionally send defective products to new customers, win them over with your swat team service, keep them for life, reduce your marketing expenses, increase loyalty and ROI...

Caveat emptor from wikipedia

Caveat emptor is Latin for "let the buyer beware".
Before statutory law, the buyer had no warranty of the quality of goods. In many jurisdictions, the law now requires that goods must be of "merchantable quality". However, this implied warranty can be difficult to enforce, and may not apply to all products. Hence, buyers are still advised to be cautious.
In addition to the quality of the merchandise, this phrase also applies to the return policy. In most jurisdictions, there is no legal requirement for the vendor to provide a refund or exchange. In many cases, the vendor will not provide a refund but will provide a credit. In the case of software, movies and other copyrighted material many vendors will only do a direct exchange for another copy of the exact same title. Most stores require proof of purchase and impose time limits on exchanges or refunds; however, some larger chain stores will do exchanges or refunds at any time with or without proof of purchase.
This phrase has given rise to many informal variations, such as caveat reader (properly expressed in Latin as caveat lector).
Caveat also has been used by software documentors to entitle their collection of software functioning odditites or stumbling blocks in usage.
The opposite of caveat emptor is caveat venditor or caveat vendor, meaning "let the seller beware."

-I am now speaking with a customer service agent (I think they are in Bangalore ..

Since Vahe invoked my name I thought I would weigh in on this one. The critical success factor or key performance indicator is a satisfied customer. The job of the retailer or service provider is to provide that satisfaction, manage it, strengthen it, and build trust in their ability to do so across a variety of spectrums. This then allows the retailer or service provider to up-sell, cross-sell or otherwise expand their business.

Since the name of this Blog is Good Experience I will share one I heard recently that makes this point. My youngest daughter's boyfriend went to work for Borders recently to make cash for Christmas. A customer came in with a long list of books he wanted to buy. Borders didn't have one of them but did some research and found that a nearby Barnes and Noble did have it. They told the customer that B&N had it and how to find that store.

The customer left Borders and returned 30 minutes later. He had purchased the single book at B&N and bought all the other books on his list from Borders. I wonder what the value of that viral marketing will be.

It's all about agency whether that means customer service, product quality, product knowledge,price structure, return policy, or anything else. The hard part is setting customer expectation and providing a good experience consistently.

Hello,

I've written this and re-written this several times in order to get it just right.

But aren't a lot of you people over-thinking this? Isn't it all about treating people the way they'd like to be treated?

In the words of Don,

"It's all about agency whether that means customer service, product quality, product knowledge, price structure, return policy, or anything else. The hard part is setting customer expectation and providing a good experience consistently."

While I believe in the first sentence, I don't (can't) believe that it's that hard to provide a good customer experience. Isn't it a simple matter of common sense...treating people as you would have them treat you?

Are we so out of sync that an entire industry has grown so as to appease the masses?

Perhaps I'm the one out of touch.

Talk to me.

Online Usability Issue Becomes a Customer Experience Nightmare and an Expensive Mistake.

The offending retailer: Staples

1)I submitted online order for a file cabinet for my home.
2)After submission -- yes after the order is completed and processed -- the email order confirmation informs me that I must be home to accept delivery and only during office hours. Not possible.
3)I call customer service immediately to see if it's possible to "bend the delivery rules". They say no. I cancel the order (no hard feelings) and request a confirmation that my credit card will be refunded. I am told that will be done immediately.

That was early in September. I have since been in contact with them on at least four separate occasions as the credit has still not appeared on my statement.

A few weeks ago, my husband was home with our son who was ill that day and a delivery man showed up to "pick up the filing cabinet that I want to return." I never got one!

Ok, so they have lost my business but also how much has it cost them to deal with my repeated inquiries and to have someone come to my home to pick-up a cabinet I never received.

The lesson: provide clear delivery conditions to online customers before they place the order.

Carol Villeneuve, Vancouver, BC, Canada

John:

I appreciate your saying that you took time thinking about your note and I apologize for another note that may seem meandering – this is a blog and I am just going to write informally in one pass without edits or proof reading to get out some thoughts – here goes….

RE: I don't (can't) believe that it's that hard to provide a good customer experience. Isn't it a simple matter of common sense...treating people as you would have them treat you?

It is that simple but executing on this is not - especially when you are in a low margin, high turnover-(as in employee), minimum wage highly competitive space where each service offering you provide comes with a cost (as in systems, training, controls, rebates, employee rewards, etc.)

I believe the world will be a better place if we follow the golden rule but we still have army’s, police, etc. but, yes it is that simple.

Sam Walton believed that some customers were tired of high/low pricing and he felt that EDLP would win market share – EDLP: every day low prices – to do that he invested in the first distributed satellite network to all his stores, he invested in streamlined distribution centers and spent time working with his top suppliers to deliver on this – he succeeded and set new expectations(the hard thing that Don speaks of) in the mass retailing market place – other companies couldn’t keep up and the rest is history – the same holds true with rolling out services, like hassle free returns etc. SO, designing your business to deliver on what you say gets problematic.

In Don’s words: the hard part is setting customer expectation and providing a good experience consistently.

Sam recognized this and instituted a culture that included rituals like daily morning swat team meetings, weekend meetings, he learned to fly a plane so he could visit more strores in the early days, he institutionalized ideas like “get it done by sun down” all simple ideas that took leadership and an unshakeable mission – I could fill pages talking about all of the things he did to execute on common sense -

It is that simple, we don’t have too many Sam’s who can keep business on track – we have an environment that rewards quarter to quarter results (a development that changed attitude of workers in the service industry – this by the way, is worth talking about and has been talked about elsewhere/everywhere) – but some people get it – get the power of culture – like Whole Foods – and as a result, they grow and phenomenal rates and trade at nose bleed P/E multiples –

It is that simple – execution and leadership are the rub – for another data point, check out RetailSucks.com –

Keeping a chain store or restaurant or hotel or multichannel firm on track regarding services is tough stuff – I am sure you agree that it is understandable in that scenario that a customer satisifaction level of 90% might be reasonable but that still means that a firm with a million customers ( a mid sized firm) will have a churn of 100K – moving that by a point or so becomes problematic – that’s reality

What a timely column. I've just finished filling out a customer satisfaction survey for Hewlett-Packard (HP). My little inkjet printer no longer works. On my first call, the technician told me she couldn't help me because I was using a Mac. I pointed out that the printer was physically broken so it probably wasn't an operating system issue and when that didn't help, asked for a supervisor. The supervisor told me that it was probably a defective ink cartridge (even though I bought it from CompUSA) and he sent me a replacement cartridge (worth about $20 given ink prices). Well, the printer still doesn't work so I called back. I happened to get the same supervisor, who now informed me that the printer was six weeks out of warranty and he could not help me, but I could trade in the printer and get a discount on some new models. By looking up the cost of the new printers, I could tell that the trade-in value was about $20, and I mentioned this to the supervisor. "I'm sorry that's all I can do," he said.

My last HP printer was a workhorse -- it lasted for ten years and made me very brand loyal. This one lasted 13 months and so far it's been a big hassle. Am I going to buy another HP printer? Maybe, maybe not. Was the supervisor just following the rules as HP gave them to him? Maybe. Was it a good customer experience? No.

Customer service: how you deal with your customers.

Customer experience: how your customers feel after dealing with you.

>>> "My point is a business can have a great product or service and lousy customer experience and be successful, but great customer service and lousy product ultimately fails."

This comment amazes me, especially since I read that it comes from somone in financial services.

I would argue that, especially in financial services, your customer service IS your product.

Banks all basically have the same products; it is their service that varies (can I bank online? how are the employees? where are the ATMs? etc. etc.)

Update on my HP printer situation: I got a call today from a case supervisor. After we chatted for a few minutes, he offered to replace the printer even though it was out of warranty. He made it clear that this was a favor and not their standard procedure. He was very professional, and I give a big thumbs up to HP for handling the situation and making me a happy customer.

I guess it depends... Customer Experience SHOULD/COULD be more than Customer Service, but in a number of cases it isn't. I worked with a large utilities company and found out that more than 80% of the customers only customer experience was the invoice they got once a year... And they did not understood any of it...

Here is an airline experience for you. If I were to tell you -

You wake up at mid-night and check-in to get the seat you want.

You reach the gate early, and then sit on the floor, in a line, generally for an hour to claim your seat. Or you may go later, stand at the tail of the same line and not get a seat of your choice.

Would you call it a good experience? The answer would be no!

However, this is exactly what SouthWest Airlines does every day to millions of its customers, most of who swear by its EXCELLENT customer experience.

So we come back to the question - What exactly is Good Customer Experience?

Linus

What a timely column. I've just finished filling out a customer satisfaction survey for Hewlett-Packard (HP). My little inkjet printer no longer works. On my first call, the technician told me she couldn't help me because I was using a Mac. I pointed out that the printer was physically broken so it probably wasn't an operating system issue and when that didn't help, asked for a supervisor. The supervisor told me that it was probably a defective ink cartridge (even though I bought it from CompUSA) and he sent me a replacement cartridge (worth about $20 given ink prices). Well, the printer still doesn't work so I called back. I happened to get the same supervisor, who now informed me that the printer was six weeks out of warranty and he could not help me, but I could trade in the printer and get a discount on some new models. By looking up the cost of the new printers, I could tell that the trade-in value was about $20, and I mentioned this to the supervisor. "I'm sorry that's all I can do," he said.

My last HP printer was a workhorse -- it lasted for ten years and made me very brand loyal. This one lasted 13 months and so far it's been a big hassle. Am I going to buy another HP printer? Maybe, maybe not. Was the supervisor just following the rules as HP gave them to him? Maybe. Was it a good customer experience? No.

Posted by KS on December 11, 2005 03:01 AM

Hi KS and other.
I SO Hear you. I too had issues with HP.

I bought a complete package. Computer, Monitor, And the HP psc 1350 All in one in October 2004.
In October (yes that same month) they had to replace the printer 2 times. The printer needed to be replaced a third time in Feb 05. I recently checked to see if the problem had a solution but it was listed as "no Solution Available". The printer is obviously defective and has been, but will they stand behind there product. NO!

Another unhappy customer ready to jump the HP ship,
Lillie

Customer Service is not merely about the people they hire and train.