Last Friday I realized I needed a projection screen for an event on Saturday night.  I checked the Internet before leaving the office to confirm Staples carried them and headed off to the nearest one to pick it up. I had exactly 20 minutes to execute this mission.  I quickly found the area in the store and located a display box meant to symbolize the actual item that is too bulky for retail shelves. I picked up a few more items for the office and headed to check out. This is where it got interesting. Apparently, a box on the shelf doesn’t indicate that Staples has the product. In fact, in this case they didn’t. No worries I was told by a confident young chap, we’ll order it over the Internet and you’ll have it tomorrow. I told him, it absolutely positively had to be there tomorrow and he, once again confidently, assured me it would. We even discussed sending it to a store nearer my home since it would come on Saturday. He advised me that deliveries to the store would be there before 11 but having it sent to my home might mean a delivery later in the day.  He painstakingly entered my info into the magic computer – typing skills are not required for this position – printed out a form and sent me off to check out. I trotted off to the front smugly thinking what a great power shopper I was.  But alas, my smugness was short lived. The gal at the front checking me out actually read the form, I merely assumed it matched the verbal information I had been given. She discovered upon closer inspection that the item wasn’t due to ship for three weeks. The nice chap now apologized and explained he wasn’t used to working on Fridays. He confidently shared, that normally things ship the next day unless it’s a weekend.  He had no idea how to help me since it was Friday and all. Oh really, your next business day equals three weeks later? The miracle of this is that anyone noticed at all. I had already gone back to reading my Blackberry in line. I certainly wouldn’t have noticed it until the next day when I showed up for the pick up, found it wasn’t there and then inspected the form. I would have been livid.
I then dashed off to a competitor, Office Max where I met a not-so-confident and not so young man. He wasn’t sure what the product was and expressed surprise that they even carried them. He needed me to show him where in the store I had found the tag.  He seemed to have no clue who to ask and wasn’t even familiar enough with the store to know where it might be. He told me to keep shopping while he tried to find out what to do. He had to launch a full out recognizance mission to locate it. A couple of times I saw him walking back and forth almost aimlessly trying to find someone else while talking into a microphone attached to his ear. I was so worried that I called my husband and sent him out to find a projector on the other side of town.  I had already started planning my next move which would be a post on Facebook looking to borrow a projector when low and behold, he reappeared with the screen. I happily went on my way having devoted a lot more than twenty minutes to this endeavor but successful none the less.
So what’s better someone who seems in control, who confidently assures you that your problem is taken care of and then completely fails or the not-so-confident guy who had me worried the whole time but in the end delivered?
It drives me crazy when a person in a place of business responds to a question with the words “I don’t know.” It drives me equally crazy when someone tells me something as if they know what they are talking about but it turns out, they don’t.   In any company, no matter how big, everyone who is customer facing should know where to get an answer. And they should confidently assure the customer that they know where to go and will set the wheels in motion so that the customer gets their question answered.  You can’t just go through the motions, you have to deliver which means you need to be familiar with the products, the processes, and the organization so you know where to go to get an answer.  Customers need to feel that they are dealing with a competent representative at all times.
Ask yourself if everyone in your business knows where to go to get any question answered. Watch or listen to how they handle customers in person or on the phone. Do you hear the words “I don’t know?” Do you hear inaccurate information being conveyed? Fix it.

A new survey exploring attitudes and preferences toward customer service conducted in the U.S. and around the world found that 61% of those surveyed will spend an average of 9% more when they believe a company provides excellent service.
On the flip side, only 37% of those surveyed believe that companies have increased their focus on providing quality service. Another 27% feel businesses have not changed their attitude toward customer service in the current economic climate, and 28 % say that companies are now paying less attention to good service.

 

There is a real opportunity today to differentiate your business using customer service.  Here’s an example: A colleague of mine and I took the train to Philadelphia for a meeting on Monday. My experiences with Amtrak over the years have been far from satisfactory. From the crowded cars to rude passengers and surly staff to the peculiar smells, it has seemed much easier to drive or fly.

I had a car accident last week. I was stopped at a traffic light when a landscaping truck pulling a piece of heavy equipment plowed into the rear of my car. I was on my way to a funeral so it was the perfect end to what was already a bad day.

Company 1: Unnamed

After making my way home after the accident, I called my insurance company. I received a recorded message before a person got on the line asking if I would participate in a survey following my interaction. My company specializes in cross-channel marketing, and we have to develop questions for respondents who visit Web pages in order to respond to a direct marketing initiative. Hoping to turn the terrible experience of my accident into a learning opportunity, I volunteered to take the survey. I looked forward to comparing their process to one of ours and perhaps even uncovering a best practice that we could incorporate into our projects.