Extract from ASP paper - The Great Customer Experience

Jeffrey Tarter kindly included my contribution in the Association of Support Professionals report entitled, "The Great Customer Experience". Here's the extract of my portion:

"Measured response is best; the Wow! factor is unnecessary for most customer support interactions. Only if a situation warrants it, should the customer service experience be delivered in a surprising way. For example, you walk in expecting a fight over a warranty claim; you explain the situation passionately, the store assistant grants you leeway and you get what you wanted. By contrast, in a routine scenario, the measured response should be efficient and consistent. Overdoing the response seems wasteful and a bit like overbearing hosts who over-serve guests in their home. The guests may be unlikely to return. I am personally most impressed by efficiency and clarity coupled with thoughtful policy.

Occasionally you come across examples of innovation in customer service where there is a major step forward in both business and customer goals. Apple’s move to allow returns through stores is a good example of this. Apple gets the opportunity to screen devices using Genius Bar staff before they get shipped to distant repair centers. This disambiguates software issues from hardware issues, reduces unnecessary shipping traffic and gives the customer a feeling that they are being dealt with by well-qualified staff. Apple lined up many stars to make such an innovation possible. Others can emulate this kind of retail experience using remote-control tools, self-service troubleshooters and clear policy.

Research on the topic of service recovery suggests that a customer is more likely to be dissatisfied with your company if you handle an escalation from a customer experience poorly, than if you did nothing at all. Despite the best will in the world, customers will have bad experiences when interacting with support and service; policies are utilitarian by nature and so exclude outlier scenarios. I believe the take-home from both Apple and the research on service recovery is the simple human need for connection with the company; if the product not only functions well but the company officers care enough to provide efficient customer service, then the customer may feel disposed to keep paying their salaries by buying another ‘reliable’ product. Reliability is not just about hardware. If your corporation operationally splits the cost of support, the cost of warranty and the cost of customer retention (and acquisition), then you should create alliances on the back-end to ensure your internal groups are all investing in the customer relationship, in concert.

Great customer support experiences are like small clouds that pass through the sky fleetingly, there and then gone. The direct product experience is the main show."

iPhone return rates - reflecting on a SquareTrade study

SquareTrade Inc released a perceived reliability study of iPhone versus Blackberry versus Treo smartphones. The study is designed to draw attention to SquareTrade to sell more extended warranty and insurance products. However their role in receiving warranted product places them in a position to gather data that can be useful to the industry. Similar warranty players include Warrantech, Asurion and Assurant.

MarketWatch commented, "The study, based on data from over 15,000 phones, finds that only 5.6% of iPhone users reported a device malfunction in the first year of ownership, compared with 11.9% of BlackBerry owners and a staggering 16.2% of Treo owners."

While a proportion of failures may be genuine hardware failures, the number of no trouble found (aka. NTF) is usually the vast majority. By NTF, the industry means that upon inspection at the repair facilities, the smartphone had nothing wrong with it by reference to the specifications in the repair process. This does not mean that the customer has misperceived. The customer in most cases perceived a frustration or failure. The revelation of NTF is that products are not necessarily acceptable or supportible in a cost-effective way. This is a multi-million dollar puzzle that iPhone's creators seem to understand better than most. The carbon-footprint of all these returns and refurbishments is staggering. What a waste of materials and effort.

While I am not directly involved in NTF reduction, here is my perception of why iPhone is doing so well in customer acceptance (not returning the phone):

• Apple reliability is hard won through rigorous hardware design and testing.
• Apple has a true commitment to fix customer frustrations and bugs (primarily in the software)
  
• And the icing on the cake is an update mechanism that is mindlessly simple to execute.
• The tolerance level for a beautiful device is much higher than for one which is perceived as less stylish or outmoded.
• Apple is controlling the customer care experience in stores and at their call centers (not through ATT call centers and ATT outsourcers.) The Apple KM process extends to all those who authorize returns.
• There are few understanding gaps with iPhone - the complex has been rendered simple or omitted from view. No one needs to see an APN configuration dialog such as you see in Windows Mobile or Palm OS.
• The iPhone rarely causes user frustration. It has foibles but it generally behaves well. You can be certain that all products receive a usability audit.
  
• iPhone has unrivaled features you cannot get elsewhere - the web browser is still the best mobile browsing experience.
• Apple has re-engaged the enthusiasm once felt by Palm OS customers by creating a marketplace for applications to enhance the experience and raise the investment commitment level of its customers.
• Apple brand is both strong and aspirational. Who does not like the instant kudos of being associated with an aspirational brand. This is a double edged sword if Apple should misstep.
  
• Apple in my experience is good at creating reliability for the warranty period. The report also commented upon this. Second year reliability is a concern. If this is a conscious choice by Apple, it is not something to be proud of.

The culture of care

I admire products that subtly exude care; a caring about quality. Good parents are like this too - they abide courageously with the good and the bad from their child. In the context of a product, I regard care as responsible attention to detail. Many technology products have trendy feature-sets but they have foibles that were overlooked, ignored or missed. Usable, delightful, fit for purpose, non-abusive material, non-abusive manufacturing process, fairly priced, consistent and delivered in a timely way, these are the attributes of carefully designed products.

I have a Sangean WiFi radio in my home. It's a wonderful radio with rich tones and easy setup. I use it to listen to radio stations from home and BBC on-demand programs. I set up my favorite podcast on Reciva.com (the companion site to most WiFi radios - where you store your favorites). But when I play a podcast, the radio often resets or restarts the podcast 10 minutes into playback. My guess is that Sangean skimped on the buffer memory for streaming. It makes me feel bad about the whole radio but I have resigned myself to streaming the podcast from my PC using the PC-share feature.

Consistency is one of the main factors of care. To maintain intrinsic quality, demonstrates grit and intelligent stubbornness. Apple is one of the brands that comes to mind when I think of a high-level of care and attention to detail. Their success was hard won over a long period; it is not a 'flash-in-the-pan' success. Professional artists and academics require rigorous and consistent quality standards if they are to perform and feel willing to re-purchase. It may seem like you are buying just another laptop when you buy a MacBook but you get professional-grade audio and video playback facilities as standard. The reason Apple computers have an aura of cool is because professionals recognized this quality early on and continued to use these products. People who aspired to be like these artists noticed and followed suit without necessarily understanding the linkage.

To excel at technological choices, takes luck and takes careful tending of the supply chain. I like to think of any purchase as an act of drawing up material from the earth. It is like sucking water through a hose. By taking a plastic bag in Safeway, you are driving the bag supply chain to deliver more to that Safeway store. The bag manufacturer uses oil to produce the bag plastics, package the bulk materials and to deliver the bags to that store. The oil companies literally take the material from the earth. It all sounds obvious but it requires effort and care to think about it repeatedly. Being willfully grateful is the answer. Purchasing is a privilege and should not be indulged mindlessly.

The current downturn in economics can be viewed as a time for the supply-chain and the vacuum-hose of manufacturing to allow the earth to rest. Less money in your pocket means more care with selection of your purchases - by necessity. The same economics drove Toyota Prius sales when petrol prices skyrocketed in the summer of 2008. This change in demand also drives manufacturers to supply goods that are appropriate to a more selective customer base. In reality, lower price goods or high-quality mid-tier goods will sell. For my next post, I plan to research how spending patterns changed in former deep recessions to see how it affected product quality and environmental impact.

Judging the ASP Online Ten Best Web Support Sites of 2008

I have judged the http://www.asponline.com/ annual web support site awards for a couple of years. I took a break for two years and am back this year again. I got my packet of review materials from five entrants late last week. In past years I have had more entries for companies whose sites I admire. This year I received entries for lesser known companies or more B2B companies.

So selfishly, I have less to learn from the entry essays this year but there are always nuggets of wisdom to be found.

Outside of the competition, I have noticed some interesting trends that are not yet captured in the judging guidelines. For example, Web 2.0 seems to be almost ignored by larger technology sites. I note Dell as a major exception here - they have created a progressive customer engagement site, Dell Community. The components are video (delivered via a Flash UI), Ideas (an ideas exchange), Forums (the same as the old forums but a good Lithium forum implementation) and Blogs. There are a few other elements here like Wikis and Podcasts and RSS that hark to an older form of engagement. So what is progressive about this? Video - the video player uses real technicians and engineers to show and tell. The player directly links to the buy-path of the products shown. Videos can be rated and commented upon. The ideas exchange is a place for customers to directly tell Dell product marketing people and support people what the feel about the products now and how they want Dell products to be shaped in the future. Another company who embraces this idea is Lego - Mindstorms is a classic example of direct customer engagement. Lego is openly discussing new feature choices with key customer segment volunteers.

Another trend missing in the ASP judging guidelines is the trend towards integrated support that is both visible and invisible to the customer. Broadband vendors have embraced vendors like SupportSoft to help them with the multifarious connectivity issues in phone, cable and multi-play scenarios. You barely see the software unless a problem arises. Even when you do see it, the software is auto-checking the issue - interaction is rarely needed. Symantec doploys chat tools and knowledgebase directly embedded in the product interface - Norton 360 is a good example of this. Look at any Microsoft Office product to see integrated knowledgebase right in the product UI. Why assume that a customer will know to go to your website. In the case of Microsoft, it is a gamble that they would find the right section of your site to get the help they need. Present the help where it is needed and give yourself the opportunity to update the messaging and to gather rich usage data. Support Chat is much more than it seems on the surface - it implies so much more when you see what comes with it - it usually is allied to a scripting tool - somewhat like BAT files - which allows remote computer discovery and the ability to effect changes remotely. Initiating a Chat session can trigger a set of self-checking routines that make a customer interaction with a support agent unnecessary. If your PC is acting badly because the CPU is overloaded, the auto-checking scripts can find this quickly and alert you before you get thru to a person. It's easier for the customer and saves CSR time.

In short, I see much web support today (2008) based around a transactional break-fix and search/navigate model. I believe the next generation of support will be much more about customer engagement, sharing, rating and automated self-diagnosis. The B2B area may take longer to embrace this but there are signs that this area is catching on too.

Online support ideas and thoughts

I look after the online support infrastructure and online content for a well known technology company with a predominantly B2C audience. We redesign and re-architect the support infrastructure every couple of years.

This is my place to muse on the latest in online support trends and my views on how best to support customers online.