Customer Service

Telehealth, telemedicine and broadband

The advancement in Internet connectivity and the wide spread of broadband Internet use brought with it many advantages to the masses. As in IT person, I always believed that the Internet will improve communications to the degree that it will have a profound affect on many people lives.

One area where the internet is being used to help people is the medical filed, technologies such as telehealth and telemedicine are being developed to help doctors interact with patients who are hundreds of miles away.

Doctors and researchers at the AT&T Center for Telehealth Research and Policy at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, have been working for few years now on health care application where they use High-speed Internet connections to provide appropriate diagnosis and care remotely via telemedicine

This technology not only helping reach patients in remote areas, put it also cutting the cost associated with transporting patients from one facility to another and saving time as well.

For a complete report on this technology and its current uses, please visit:
http://attcenter.utmb.edu/presentations/The%20Telehealth%20Promise-Better%20Health%20Care%20and%20Cost%20Savings%20for%20the%2021st%20Century.pdf

Your most valuable employee, your secretary

Can your business ever run smoothly without your hard working, know it all secretary? I don’t know when is secretary’s week, but I am sure I will take my secretary to lunch on that week to show her/him how much I appreciate what they do.

Our company’s secretary is out sick today, hope her the best, and we can not find certain files and certain phone numbers. Since I joined my current company and was giving the job to re-organize the company, I have stressed over and over the need for good back up plan in case of an emergency.

Here are few steps you can take to minimize productivity loss while your secretary is out of the office:

1- Have a reliable filing system; this system must guide you to the location of all company’s file. The guide should be easy to understand and follow.
2- A complete phone list of all company’s employees, clients, vendors, etc.
3- A reliable phone and answering system that you can switch to in case there is no one to answer the phones.
4- If you are a small business, make sure all your employees know how the filing system works, how to use the phone system and how to access the phone list.

Some of the above step my sound elementary and you may think every business would already have such plans, but believe me I have seen many many businesses that have no filing system of any type.

Your secretary will always be one of the most valuable employees, if only for the warm and friendly greeting your clients hear over the phone, but while he/she is out, have a plan to keep the office run smoothly.

Finish what you have started

What is the distinguishing character of the most successful people? They finish what they have started.

Good business plans are only good if they are fully implemented. Many businesses started with great ideas only to see these businesses fail, they had a plan, they started to work on the plan, but they didn’t follow through.

When the management fails to emphasize the importance of following through, employees will not follow through on their job performance.

In the past few months, I had several incidents where I didn’t get excellent customer service support. In one of my international flights with a world class airlines, I had to change my destination after I checked in my luggage, only to find out later that my bags didn’t not arrive with me on the same flight. I have talked to the airlines customer agent and explained to him in full details about my intentions to change my flight routes and he re-assured me over and over that my checked in luggage will be with me on the same flight, but later on I found out that this agent didn’t not do his job thoroughly and he didn’t not rely the message to the ramp agent to pull the luggage from one flight and load into another.

In another incident, I had a tech support issue so I called the tech support line, only to talk with half trained technicians who kept giving me different answers for the same issue, a very simple problem that kept going on week after week which eventually took less than one minute to fix.

If these customer support representatives were told in their training that once they take an ownership of an issue, they must follow it through until it has been resolved, they would have paid better attention to the customer who is waiting on the other side of the line and they could have save their companies time and money.

Finish what you have started and follow through with your commitments and you will see how success will follow.

The fear of Technology

Have you ever faced with users or CEOs who are afraid of technology? What you do as an IT consultant when your plans for better systems for the company are faced by total resistance by the management?

In a real life example, I was updating all the systems for my company and we migrated from windows XP systems to Windows Vista, this migration caused few changes in how users would go by doing their daily tasks. The CEO of our company was in a business trip and when he got back and saw the new systems, he complained why his outlook express is not there anymore, he said he couldn’t use Microsoft outlook.

I tried to explain to him that outlook express is an old technology and Microsoft outlook is the closest e-mail client in features to his old outlook express. The CEO started to look for his Old IT guy who installed outlook express and wanted him to fix the problem he is having, this made me laugh.

Another example with my CEO, I wanted to have total online solutions for our banking needs where we can pay bills, issues checks and manage our accounts without going to the bank or using the phone and again he refused and said “ I don’t trust this online services, I want to write all my checks with my hands.”

The fear of change or the fear of the unknown is normal human behavior, but this can be a real problem when it stops you from completing your job or from giving the best consultations to your client.

How would you deal with clients who have fear of Technology? The best approach to use is to show them how much money they could save by having the latest technology and how employees’ productivity would improve.

Although I am facing resistance to change at my company, I managed to improve many business processes by using the right technology and the immediate reaction from the employees and clients was really encouraging

Change your old habits or lose your business

With all the rapid revolution in the Internet and in technology in general, there is no excuse for any business not to fully or partially utilize what the increasing cheap technology has to offer.

But many businesses are still using the old style of doing business, I have visited businesses in the US not too far ago who are still using Dial up connections to go online, who still don’t use online banking, and who still don’t have a website.

Many businesses are still using faxes as a means of business correspondence instead of using e-mails, many businesses owners are still going to the bank each day to do make transactions that could be easily done online, many businesses still don’t have direct bank deposits for their employees salaries and the list could include many other things that are still done using the old style of doing things.

Of course these persistence habits of doing business the old way is not only in the US, but I have seen it in other parts of the world.

The cost of broadband Internet service is about $25 in most places around the world, the cost of setting up a basic website is around $30-50/month, and online banking is available almost in every country around the world.

What give me the idea to write this article is what I am experiencing at my current position, the company I am working at not fully utilizing technology to improve business performance, at least not till I got here.
We are moving a head, we have website, we have online banking, and we have new file backing system for all our important computer files.

You will be amazed to find how many people and businesses are still behind in this technology game, you would be amazed to hear that a major credit card issuer insisted that I give them a fax number so they can send me the paper work for a claim that I needed to file and they said they can not e-mail it to me since they don’t have it on electronic format.

Fleet management tips needed

At my current job, I am facing a bit of a challenge managing our company’s fleet of about 70 cars. I have searched the internet for good fleet management software and I found few good software but I am not sure about the quality of these software.

Does anyone know of a good fleet management software?

Challenges that we are facing with our fleet of cars:

1- Rental history
2- Accident history
3- Maintenance history
4- Mileage
5- Cost of ownership
6- Warranty information
7- Checkout and check records

Of course we have some type of records for our fleet, but I like to have a complete control of our fleet where no part of fleet management is over looked.

Does anyone know of good software for fleet management and also any tips in this subject are welcome

Cut and Paste Customer Service

Have you ever experienced cut and past customer service? This is what will you get if you try to e-mail a company or a government agency asking for more information. The advancement in websites use led many customer service departments to refer their customers to the company’s website for more information.

No doubt the web is a great tool for customers to get answer for many of their questions about a service or a company. But as customers are encouraged to send e-mails if they need any more information that are not available on the website, the customer service representative are relying more and more on sending cut and paste replies back.

Recently, I have sent few e-mails to some government agencies requesting specific information on certain issues, I stated in my e-mails that I am requesting more information because I couldn’t find the information I wanted on their website or I needed more clarification on what I have read on their website.

Although I have sent detailed e-mail requesting very specific information, all I got is either automated e-mail replies or cut and paste replies. The customer service agent just cut and paste what he or she thinks is the answer for my questions from their website.

The reply basically sent in a way that makes you feel stupid, you feel like they are telling you “go and check our website stupid.”
I became certain that they don’t read the e-mails when I sent few e-mails where stated that I visited their websites, but I didn’t find the information I was looking for.

As the world moves closer each day to information and service based economies, we still have some customer service gurus who think everyone out there is stupid and doesn’t read instructions…very sad…

Customer service ….will it ever improve!!!!!!!!!

I am a person who, by his profession and life style, has to deal a lot with different types of customer service agents, either in person or on the phone. Because of my traveling, I came to deal with many customer services representatives in few countries.
Dealing with customer service representatives could range from simple inquiries such as asking about flight information or asking for directions to serious matter such as asking information about investment and immigration laws.

As a professional, I would never consult with a customer service representative on serious matters, but what a person could do when the only way to reach for a higher ranking official in a company or in a government agency is through a customer service agent.

While traveling, I needed to get some information about investment laws in a certain country plus I needed to get information about immigration laws of another country. On the first instance, I walked into the office of the investment authority to get first hand information about their new investment laws. Unfortunately the ill-trained agent was talking to 2-3 people at the same time about important investment laws; he talked to me briefly and gave me his number to call back if I needed any help. Honestly, I never called him back although the information that I needed were crucial, but the way this agent was dealing with the clients didn’t not encourage me to seek him for any professional advice. On the second instance, I needed to apply for a certain type of visa for a particular country, before I apply for the visa, I have called the country’s embassy few times asking for information and each time I talk with a customer service representative I get a run around and when I requested to talk to a visa official, the answer is always “that is not possible.”

Why would a company or a government agency hire customer service representatives and not train them well or give them enough authority to make decisions?

Dealing with customer service agents in various industries and being a customer service agent myself at one point in my life, I can tell that customer service agents’ job performance could never improve beyond certain level. Unfortunately, companies are not welling to invest more in training of their customer service agents, nor the job has the appeal and future job security that would encourage the agents to focus on improving their job skills.
When the customer service agent gives the client the wrong information, who will be responsible of the consequences? It happened to me few times!!!!!!!

What is happening to the quality of customer service?

Why the quality of customer service is in decline? Why the customer service staff is not knowledgeable? Why when you send an e-mail inquiry, all you get back is a reference to a website where you have to dig for information? Why customer service is not personal anymore?

I have been traveling for the last seven months and throughout my traveling I had to deal with customer service staff in various organizations. My overall impression was: companies are putting speed before quality; they care about quantity more than they care about quality.

A person my think; because of the rapid spread of technology and the ease of spreading knowledge, companies would spend more time in educating their customer service staff, but it seems like most companies are caught in a fierce competition that they are focusing more about quantity than quality.
This trend of focusing on quantity more than quality is not something new, at least not for me. Around 1996, I was working as customer service representative for one of the biggest computer manufacturer in the US. Working there, I was openly told to take more calls than to solve customer issues. In our training, we were trained on how to get the customer of the phone regardless if we solved his/her issue or not, as long as the customer was satisfied and was giving the impression that the issue was resolved. Needless to say this policy didn’t work for long and the company ended up closing the call center after so many complaints from the customers. That was not the only job where I had this experience and the results were always the same: giving the customer the impression that he/she is getting a good service while not actually helping them will always come back to hunt you.