CRM

Customers Service, US still has the lead

As manager, one of the things that I always miss about the US is the quality of customer service you can get in the US. In my daily work as a manager here in this side of the world, I constantly need to call various vendors to order services for my company, 90% of the time, vendors cannot deliver on schedule.

Working in the US, on-time performance was on top of my priorities as consultant and it understood by both vendors and clients that on-time performance was something taken for granted.

Unfortunately, on-time performance is something you cannot be taken for granted in many parts of the world nor even call back cannot be taken for granted.

Here are some real life examples of customer service issues I had to deal with in the past:

My company: Hello, I am calling you regarding our car that you fixed; we are still waiting on you to send us the final bill.
The vendor: Oh, I am sorry, I was on vacation for the last 3 weeks, and I forgot to call you and send you the bill.
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Our company: Hello, I am calling you regarding the service appointment we had with you for today to come and look at our printer.
The Tech: oh really? Yes yes, now I remember you called me yesterday to set the appointment. I am sorry; can I come today at 12.30PM?
Our company: Yes, you can (and we never hear from the tech again)
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Our company: (calling major auto dealer in town) Hello, I called your cell phone number that you gave me to let you know if we want to fix our car or not, but you did not answer although I called you few times.
The customer service tech at the dealer: oh but I don’t answer calls from un-known numbers (this has to be classis)
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These are only a small list of a huge problem with customer service issues you face here. Many people in the US complain about the quality of customer service in the US, but the US still lead the world in the quality of customer service provided and the world still has a lot to learn from the US in this matter.

Yes to customer service, but set the limits

I am an avid advocate of a great customer service, your customer deserves the best, but you must sit the limits. Over the past couple of weeks, I hit a road block with one of our most important customers. We were not able to complete a service request on the promised time because of some government regulations which keep changing, the customer would not accept my explanation and threatened me that he will take his business somewhere else.

What to do? I know that our company could have used its social network and we would have resolved the customer issue at this time, but that would have set our limits too high and the customer would expect that each time. I thought this was a bad policy.

So, I sat with the customer and explained to him the importance of his business to us and we strive to give his company the best customer service for his money, but there will be limits to what we can deliver and I want to make that very clear.

The customer didn’t feel very good about that, but I had to stand my ground and make sure I don’t promise what I can’t deliver.

At the end, the customer was able to digest what I said and he felt more confidence in our service.

So, don’t promise what you cannot deliver.

Why companies always under estimate the value of phone support?

When I started to work as technical support rep for a major PC manufacturer, I felt great responsibility of solving customers’ issues over the phone, I felt each customer was really important and I must resolve his or her issue to a complete satisfaction. But the management had a different objective, they waned me to calls, they wanted to make sure a take certain call per hour, it was not important to resolve customer issue as long as I can make the customer feel that he was giving great help.

In my job performance reviews, I used to get modest rating because I was spending so much time helping customers over the phone. I could never understand why companies won’t give support that was promised when the customer purchased the product, why companies treat phone support as a marketing tool while they should consider phone support as an obligation they must fulfill.

In the small company that I run, our customers are always our number one priority and its one of my top concerns each day that each customer who calls us get an excellent support over the phone.

Software Developers must look at the global market

“Think about a borderless market”, this what one Microsoft executive said upon establishing a new operation for Microsoft in Dubai. It’s true, we live in an increasingly borderless world, a product that once was designed for a particular market now can be marketed in other parts of the world.

What gave me the idea about this article is the problem I have been facing for quite sometimes finding a good CRM or HR software for my company. I am not looking for solutions provided by major software vendors; I just want something that can be used in the small business environment.

While doing on-line search, I found few good software but the problem was that most of these software were designed to work only in the US or most of their features were set for US work environment.

I tried to search the local market where I work now, Doha, Qatar, for good HR software that fits our business needs and I was very disappointed by the results, most of the software I found were either too expensive or were not well developed and lacked customer support.

I believe there is a huge market in the part of the world, Asia and the Arab world, for small business software, with little customization and localization, many business software that were developed for the US market can be sold in the part of the world.

Understand what your customers want…listen

I have talked about this subject few times before but since it’s so important, I feel the urge to visit this topic from time to time.

I have been working with customers support issues since 1995, since that time I have worked with many issues related to customer service, from online support to testing customer’s web site for usability.

You would think with the advancement in technology and the increase of quality of living world wide it would translates in a better customer service, but what I have been experiencing in the past few years is that “companies really don’t listen to what the customer is saying.”

I have talked to customer service representatives from credit card companies, banks, airlines, software companies government agencies, etc, and the one common thing that I have experienced again and again is “they really don’t listen to what you are saying.” I wonder why companies have support lines when they are not willing to provide the right service to callers. Most of the times when you call a support line you hear the phrase” this call may be monitored to help us improve our customer service support”, but the service never improve.

In many instances when I call the customer service line, I call to get a very simple answer, but because the representative is not listening to what I am saying, he or she keeps taking my into circles.

When is comes to quality of service, there will always be room for improvement, but it is a shame to be living in the 21st century and we still cannot get the adequate customer service.

Global Executives Reveal Their Top IT Problems

In a survey conducted by independent IT Governance Institute (ITGI) earlier this year revealed some major IT problems faced by Global Executives, what do you think the major problems were?

1-Insufficient IT staff availability
2- Service delivery issues
3- Difficulty proving the value of information technology

All the above issues I can relate too, but I think the most interesting one is “the Difficulty proving the value of information technology.” There are still many businesses world-wide who are not able to see the benefits of having the latest Information technology implemented or can justify the cost of purchasing information technology.

At my own job where I am working now, I am not able to convince the management of the advantages of having IP telephony.

The other two points are important too and I don’t think IT staff shortages or Service delivery issues are problems to be resolved in the near future.

Batch processing and ActiveBatch 7.0

If you are a business manager or IT consultant, you know that there is not enough time, time is your biggest killer, so many tasks that need to be executed in the shortest possible time.

The concept of batch processing (in its simplest form) is to have a software program (script) run a task for you. For example: each morning you launch your web browser and navigate your way to your chosen financial broker website to get the latest activities on a stock, with batch processing, you can automate this daily activity so at certain hour of the day, you will have the stock(s) activities displayed on your screen or even e-mailed to you.

Batch processing is to automate repetitive tasks by writing scripts (codes.) In my early programming days, I had to write scripts to run tests on website, they idea was to have the script send thothands of page requests to a particular website, to simulate the actual users. Writing the script was time consuming and error prone.

Since that time, lots of improvement is being made in the automation of batch processing. Several software vendors are offering solutions to ease task creation under batch processing. One the vendors’ solutions that I had the privilege to review was Activebatch 7.0 by Advanced Systems Concepts. Using tele-conferning and web conferencing, Jim Manias from Advanced Systems Concepts, gave me a great overview of the new ActiveBatch 7.0 release.

On of the main features of ActiveBatch 7.0 (which I try to discuss more in the coming posts), is significantly reducing the need to write scripts, most of scripts writing is already done for you, you only have to chose the task and click.

In the next several posts, I will try to get into more details of ActiveBatch 7.0 features.

The danger of e-mails

How long do you think before sending an angry e-mail? Composing and sending an e-mail can take only few minutes but sending the wrong e-mail can have great consequences.

In the old days of pens and papers, sending an angry letter or memo would take time, you have to sit down and compose the letter, if you make mistakes you may need to start all over, you need to make sure you didn’t misspell any word and you have to take the time to deliver the letter or mail it.

Composing a regular letter takes considerably more time than sending an e-mail, the time you spend composing a letter and sending it is the time you are given to re-think about that angry letter or memo you are about to hand or mail.

How many times you have regretted sending an e-mail after clicking the “send” button? I know there are some technical tricks you can use to retrieve an unopened e-mail, but in normal circumstances once an e-mail is sent, there is a little chance of stopping the receiver from reading it.

We all get our moments at our work or in your relationships, sending e-mails should be the last thing you use when you are not sure about your judgment.

The next IT boom

Which country will be the next hot spot for IT jobs and IT products? Few months back, I was on a long visit to India, I had a chance to visit few cities. Various industries in India are adopting the latest IT solutions to improve their business process, sure the trend is world wide, but looking at the size of India, the size of its population and the growing educated and middle class, make India the ideal hot spot for IT services and products.

While visiting India, I saw the rapid spread of broad band use, laptops use, online banking, etc. All these type of services require manpower, technology and good infrastructures and with the size and population of India you can only imagine the amount of investment needed.

Many areas of the world are growing rapidly, but I think in India will be the most demanding.

Can we survive without e-mails even for one day?

I am sure the answer will be “NO”, e-mails became the most vital and important communications mean for the modern organizations.

What brought this subject up is the current economic crisis in the US and the rest of the world. Many fear for their jobs, we still don’t know how things will turn out but for many there will be jobs cut.

IT and the other related services are not the property of the elite anymore; many IT services became integral part of the modern work place, IT services are must for the business world today.

I believe that the current financial crisis will not, significantly, affect IT services. Simple e-mail down for one day my halt the operation for many companies, so just think what would happen if some other IT services went down.

What I am trying to say is “IT is not a thing to have, its a MUST have and the world will need IT services regardless of the financial situation.”