Customer Service

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.

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.

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.”

Will Windows Vista put an end to Microsoft dominance of Operating systems?

If we look back at the early days of windows based operating systems we can see the huge enhancement Microsoft made to the Desk top operating systems, from DOS to windows 3.1 to win95 to win2000 and finally Win XP.

For many users, win XP was (end still) the best operating system Microsoft ever written, with SP1 and SP2, Microsoft fixed major bugs in the system and the users community was content with winXP.

Only when everything seemed to be working great with winXP, Microsoft released windows Vista, I personally, and I am sure as millions of users, was not ready to let go of winXP and start the journey to learn new operating system with its all new features.

Recently, I had to replace my company’s computer systems with new systems, I wanted to get new systems with XP, but the vendor told me they only can provide us systems with windows Visa. I was not very happy to migrate to Vista yet.

The transition from windows XP to windows vista is not as smooth as it should be, for the average user windows XP is more user friendly than windows Vista. One feature of windows Vista that I particularly find hard to understand for the average user is the Network and file sharing properties in windows Vista.
In its attempt to make windows Vista more secure, Microsoft made setting up network and resource sharing in windows Vista a bit hard to configure, there are many security features the user have to configure.

From a historical point of view, I can tell that Microsoft reached its full potential with windows XP, there was no need to release a new operating system at the time when windows XP was performing real well with the users.

Beijing 2008 Olympic and the New Century for China

In August 8, 2008, the whole world watched the starting ceremony for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, the ceremony showed a great deal of China’s tradition and culture, it showed China’s past, but one thing It failed to show, or at least I failed to notice, is China’s future.

As a person who has never been to China, the ceremony confirmed my old views of China, a country full of traditions, various cultures and people who are proud of their legacy, but the world already know this about China, I was looking for “Future China.”

I wanted to see the new image of China as one of the world’s next super power, I wanted to see what China is preparing for the world, we all read and hear about new China and I thought the Olympic Games is one of the most powerful tool to market your country to the world.

In the Games of 84 in Los Angeles, the United States showed its technological advances and the readiness of its space exploration program by showing a man flying in a space suit. It showed the world the US determination to conquer space.

The Olympic is a great marketing tool, so far, by watching the opening ceremony for Beijing 2008; I failed to see what China will over the world in the 21st century.