Your message and other things you say

Having just spent a week at Walt Disney World, I have to say their ability to answer questions is what sets them apart. In the times of this economic stress, I have to think they’re a little scared — family vacations are likely the first thing to get cut. But the smiles never stopped and the answers to our questions never went unanswered. From the top on down, it is apparent that attending to the needs of the folks that pay the bills is paramount. If I asked the street sweeper (the job I most do NOT want at WDW), I got answers (closest water fountain over there, AND you can get a free cup of water at ANY drink kiosk). When I was in the cab of the monorail (a COOL job), the driver never tired of my endless queries (they have 180 monorail drivers and can take ~300 of the 65,000 visitors each day to the park in a single train). The ticket-taker at Space Mountain entertained my questions (1815 riders per hour). The lady trying to sell $16,600 Disney Vacation Club memberships answered a steady stream even when it was obvious I was just killing time waiting on Cinderella to get out of the bathroom before the big dinner. The front desk clerk kindly explained that Classic Car Memorabilia charge was in fact a stroller rental, and did it with grace and a smile, even across the phone line. And so on, and so on…

I’d guess that the same is true with your business. Answering the questions of your clients, potential clients, or even just folks you run into is paramount to success. And yet few do it well. I have a colleague who rarely answers email. Others who get voice mails leave them unanswered regularly. Even face-to-face encounters seem to be focused on putting off answers instead of coming up with them. It’s socially rude and business suicide.

Answer questions. Timely. Accurately. Happily.

Had a customer experience story with a major electronics manufacturer. First, I noted that the 800 number was just for the class of equipment I owned. Second, I got a real (English-speaking) person with only two phone menus and 30 seconds. Third, they seemed genuinely interested in helping. I did get a handoff from a screener to a tech rep, but again, was on hold for less than 30 seconds, and even though I had to supply the service number I had just been given, no further information was needed.

The solution, predictably, was to download some update which would “clear things up” (even though the “what’s new in this release” snippet mentioned nothing of the sort). Both people promised an email to me (one for a follow-up survey and one for the link to the update, which I was already halfway to with Google). Both emails were in my inbox in less than 90 seconds.

Then the kicker: The very nice lady ended the call with, “and if that doesn’t happen to solve your problem, don’t hesitate to call us back.” Both humans were unusually pleasant.

I realize that they all still read from the script, that there is a limited chance my problem will go away, and everyone is a lot happier with a holiday looming, but still… They had a pre-filter to route me to the folks that could help me, they were nice, questions were answered directly, they listened when they were supposed to listen and talked when they were supposed to talk, and they didn’t make me feel like I had been an imposition. We could hope that all manufacturers would be as nice to deal with.

Customer service is easy. Make it pleasant for the customer. I.e. “serve them!

As part of my coaching, one of the areas we almost always touch on is how to answer questions. In my experience, a large majority of people who can competently share information fall flat on their face when asked a direct question. Most coachees I work with can go for 30 minutes with no major gaffes or goofs, and I’ll ask, “How did that feel to you?” The first word out of their mouth? “Uh, …” Paragraphs of information without a moments hesitation, and when asked a (simple) question, their confidence apparently leaks rapidly.

Perhaps no area of public speaking can lose credibility as fast as in answering questions (poorly). That’s why it’s so important to have that polished and ready to go. We can never be fully prepared for every question, of course, so it’s important to practice technique as well as content.

But some low-hanging fruit:

• Make up a set of 5 FAQs or MHQ (most hated questions) and after crafting a (good) response practice answering that question with a straight face until you can do it right. Corollary: if you can’t quote your rate with a straight face or flinching or saying “Uh”, do you really think you’re worth it?
• Don’t qualify the question. No “That’s a good question,” or “I’m really glad you asked that question.” If there’s emotion involved, connect with that emotion (”It sounds like that’s a frustrating area for you. I can see why you’d be concerned.“
• LOOK at the person who asked the question as you answer it. Not ALL the time, but most of the time. If there’s a part of the question that is direct (e.g. “No.“), then answer that directly to the asker of the question. Qualify and add detail to the entire audience.
• Don’t respond until you know what you’re going to say. Avoid the dreaded “Uh, …” as the first word (which, BTW, is overwhelmingly the first word out of the mouths of an MBA student when you ask why you should hire them).
• And definitely, don’t ever, ever make up an answer. If you don’t know, then say so (bonus points for making the next words out of your mouth, “but I’ll find out and get back to you.“)

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Questions are so important, why leave them to change? Practice the answers and the answering until you can get it right.

Trying to book a flight for an upcoming trip.  Against my better judgment, the nonstop flight woos me and I try to book on an anonymous airline108 that tries to parade as the airline of the country.

When I get to “purchase ticket”, it tells me to be careful and not hit anything twice, double booking, etc.  I watch for two seconds and switch to a window to book a hotel.  A few minutes later I return to the website to be greeted by a message that said their server timed out, the IT guys went on strike, or a nuclear bomb destroyed their reservations facility.  I hit the back button on my browser to be greeted with a confirmation page that has retained none of my information.

Now I have no idea if they’ve billed me or not.  I’ve got no confirmation email and my guess is no.  So I click the little “chat with an agent” button to be greeted with a nice window telling me all agents are busy.  If I want to get an agent, I should close the little popup window and click on the same button I just clicked to get this notice.  I don’t think I want to spend the rest of my night trying to see if there are agents chatting with customers (my guess is they all went home at 5pm EDT).

So which is easier:

1. Spending probably an hour of my time trying to confirm that I don’t have a flight booked and trying to rebook it, or
2. Confirming with my credit card that no charges went through and/or canceling them if they did and booking on one of the three airlines I normally travel and KNOW their web site works.

Hmmm…
No wonder they went bankrupt.  Glad our tax dollars saved this airline from destruction.

Make it easy for customers to buy.

Thanks to my ISP ‘improving’ the offering to me (without my choice, notification, or approval), the blog has been down for four days.  I finally did my own research to at least get it to where it is, but there’s a bug with the version of mySQL that they have ‘upgraded’ me to that has posts in reverse order.  For those of you still reading via the web site (and why on earth haven’t you moved to RSS yet?), that is a major problem.  Check the calendar widget to see when a new post has been made.

Sorry for the inconvenience.  I don’t expect that I’ll be renewing my contract with this provider, and may even jump ship before it comes due.

Don’t take away features and functions that work without notification and workarounds.

On a day where we are supposed to stop, ponder, and give cognizant acknowledgment to the many good things in our lives (but here in America, judging from the size of my newspaper this morning, it is apparently about planning our shopping day for tomorrow), let be the voice crying in the wilderness begging you NOT to give thanks.  Or at least not in the method that seems to be increasing in favor, as well as uselessness.
I’m talking about a one-word email: “Thanks.“  I get many of these every week.

You send me an email asking for a review of your PPT slides (God forbid!).  I give you three pages of notes.  You respond: “Thanks“.  Yuck.

I get an invoice for services rendered.  I respond with an apology that the billing had slipped my crack-pot accounting staff and the check will be in the mail FedEx in the morning.  I get a one-word reply: “Thanks“.  Heartfelt.

There are probably places for one-word emails: “Buy“, “Sell“, “No“, “I’ll-agree-when-the-depths-of-Hades-freezes-into-a-solid-mass“.  Trying to convey appreciation is not one of them.

Many of us were taught by our parents to be polite: “Please” and “Thank you“.  And that’s a good thing.  IN PERSON.  Where emotion can be carried with non-verbal cues.  Where an explanation of why can be tacked on.  Where a relationship can be forged.  None of that is done in a one-word TY. Best I can figure, it’s either (a bad) habit or it’s a way to appease one’s conscience at supposedly being grateful, when they’re actually too lazy to pick up the phone and call or draft a heartfelt reply that explains their gratitude.  Most of the time the message really is “I got your email“.  And I didn’t need a response from you to tell me that.

I have vowed to not send any such emails.  It wastes my time and yours.

BTW, I got your email.

Resist the urge to respond to an email with a one-word “Thanks”. Instead, craft a meaningful expression of gratitude or just — gasp — let it go.

I find online that I have a service fee from my bank:

Clicking ‘more info’ I find out that there was only one fee and the total is correct:

How comforting. This will be the sixth time this year and second month in a row I’ve had to go in to discuss “service fees” with them. The bank shall remain nameless — let’s just call them “Walk All Over Ya“. Our discussion today yields:

1. An end consumer cannot find out what a service fee is for without contacting their branch or support.
2. I was told something that wasn’t true when I transferred some money to an investment account, thus invoking the wrath of the service gods upon my account when I didn’t reach some obscure — but not insignificant — minimum.
3. The rules for my minimums were changed at some point, likely communicated to me in 6-point font in a 30-page tri-fold “addendum to your account.”
4. Service fees are charged when no service was actually done (I don’t consider an automated computer triggering a charge to my account as service). There is apparently no charge for when I actually get service (talking 45 minutes to a real person).
5. When discussing fees in the past, no one bothered to tell me about a different account that would have extinguished the problem altogether.
6. The local branch manager cannot even access the information about my business account, and it took three phone calls and 42 minutes for her to find out why I was even being charged.

Here are my conclusions. Consider if this is what WAOY bank would like me to take away and spread to others via a blog entry:

1. The bank is not interested in me knowing the details and options available to me. They will tell me if I ask.
2. A customer service rep (in this case the “branch manager”) who cannot find basic details that should be clearly marked to the end consumer is relegated to saying “I’m sorry.” and “we’ll get this settled, just don’t you worry” a lot.
3. There are either a lot of people who don’t mind paying “service fees” to have an account or there is a lot of money tied up in banks for the sole purpose of keeping accounts open (doesn’t feel like my money in that case). Another option is the realization that the time it took to get this settled wasn’t worth my hourly rate. Perhaps I’m better off (financially) just ignoring it, and somehow I think they are banking (pun intended) on this.
4. The bank is not very interested in keeping me as a customer (I was told very clearly there would be no penalty for closing my account), but every flyer and poster in the building offered me incentives to refer a friend to their fine institution. Evidently I have a reason to tell others but not to stay a customer myself.
5. The entire time I was talking with “customer service” to overturn my “service fee” (the irony to that is hard to miss), all I could think about was how much I can’t wait to transfer my banking to another institution. Somehow this seems like a bad business practice to me.
6. The branch manager made a huge point of telling another customer she had to finish with me first, but when the attending underling bothered her a third time, she closed the other customer’s business right in front of me whilst on hold with her “internal customer service.”

It will take more than a little pain for me to change my automated payments away from this institution, but as a consumer, I see little option and have every desire to make a statement (another pun intended) in the only way I know how — with my business.

Make information available to your customers. Give them value for any charges you invoke on them.

Keeping with our Sunday night tradition, we went through the drive-through of a well-known fast food restaurant that shall remain nameless, but it’s image is led by a red-haired girl named Wendy.  We order the same thing every week.  We’re fairly habitual about it.

Tonight the unseen voice cut me off before I could get “#2 cheeseburger combo with sweet tea; two Jr. Cheeseburgers plain, another Jr. Cheeseburger regular, and a large Frosty” out.  She said, “We’re sorry, we’re out of fries tonight.  How else may I help you?“  OUT of fries?  How can that happen?!  Clearly, someone screwed up fairly seriously.  It’s hard to imagine the scenario that would lead a fast food restaurant to be out of french fries.  But the fact remains: tonight, this local establishment was out of fries.

And considering there was nothing (tonight) they could do to change it, I thought they chose the better scenario to deal with it.  Don’t let me order fries and then have to tell me you don’t have them, and don’t hope that I don’t order them and not tell me.  Face the issue up front, ‘fess up to it, and make it clear you’ll be glad to help in any other way possible.  It’s a most unfortunate occurrence, but make sure service and information gets through clearly.

When there’s bad news brewing, get it out of the way up front with clarity and focus on what you CAN do to provide a great experience.