Resorting to extorting isn't good service

You can call it what you want, but extortion is extortion. Telling your customer, "that's how our system works" doesn't mean you can charge for additional services in return for fixing what your customer has already paid for.

Last weekend, I experienced an extortion attempt when I called a 1-800 number for customer service. I don't want to name the company in case their goons try to track me down, so let's just say it was a major satellite radio provider.

Here's a short video re-enactment of my customer service experience. (View it here if it doesn't appear on your screen.)

This may sound cliche, but I really don't blame the six employees I spoke to. I blame the system. Specifically, there are four major problems I identified during my ordeal. Hopefully, your company doesn't have any of them but it would be wise to double-check.

Problem #1: Interactive Voice Response
Interactive voice response, or IVR, is that annoying feature that allows you to speak commands or questions rather than pushing buttons on your phone for various options. It's annoying because it rarely works. Nothing tells a customer you hate them like making them deal with an incompetent robot before they get to speak with a real person.

Problem #2: Service silos
If you are a regular reader, you already know how I feel about service silos. No customer wants to interact with an employee who has a bad case of that's-not-my-jobitis. It usually means you get passed along to someone else who may or may not be able to help you. In my case, I had to speak with six different employees before I could get a solution.

Problem #3: Blind transfers
A blind transfer is when a call center agent transfers your call to another department's phone queue rather than directly to another person. This means the person who answers the phone doesn't know what you are calling about and you have to re-explain the problem. Speaking to six different agents means I had to repeat the problem six times. The more you talk about it the more frustrating it becomes.

Problem #4: Extortion
They really did try to extort money from me. I was told by two separate employees that they could fix the problem and restore my traffic updates if I paid for a year of service. I had already paid for a year of satellite radio service in March, so paying for another year two months later seemed ridiculous. The traffic update service is an extra add-on, but I had just paid for that on May 1. That didn't stop this company from trying to tell me the only way to fix my service was to charge me for another year.

Don't worry, my service has been restored. And, I didn't have to spend much time this week dreaming up blog topics. In that sense, I guess I win.

How to quickly find lost time and increase productivity

My wife, Sally, is an efficiency expert. From my perspective, this gives us plenty of exciting things to talk about at the dinner table. One recent conversation focused on why it takes me five times longer than she to pack for a business trip. You might be able to relate if you consistently find yourself running short of time at work or at home.

Explanation #1: We have different natural abilities
Sally has the ability to visualize what she wants to pack before she starts packing. When it comes time to pack her suitcase she simply goes to her closet, grabs the clothes she visualized, and puts them in.

I can't do that. I process information in a highly kinesthetic manner. When packing for a trip, this means I have to pull all sorts of clothes out of my closet and then imagine how and when I might wear them on my trip. I also have to write down the days I'll be gone and what I'll be doing each day so I can pair an outfit with each activity. (Not doing this almost always results in me over packing but still not having enough clothes to wear.)

Sally's ability to visualize gives her a natural ability to pack faster than I can. Natural ability definitely plays a role in our packing productivity.

Explanation #2: Self-imposed distractions
I usually put the TV on in our bedroom to watch while I pack. This seems like a good way to kill the monotony, but Sally correctly points out that it also slows me down. Each time I pause to pay attention to the television I slow down the process just a bit. This can really add up if something interesting like a Laker game is on.

Sally does all her packing without any distractions. Consequently, she focuses all of her attention on the task at hand and finishes much faster.

Conclusions
If you want to do something more efficiently, you should understand which obstacles are natural and which are self-imposed. The self-imposed obstacles are a lot easier to reduce or eliminate. If I want to pack faster the easiest solution is to simply turn off the TV. I still won't be as fast as Sally, but I'll be a lot faster than I am now.

Where did all the time go?
Sometimes these inefficiencies aren't obvious. A good way to spot pockets of inefficiency is to track your time for a week and then look at the results.

I've created a simple time tracking worksheet that you can use. You can download it here or watch the nifty how-to video.

A tornado in St. Louis highlights the human side of service

Last weekend, a tornado in St. Louis reminded me that the people who provide us with customer service every day deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, and caring. Remembering to do that not only makes you a better person, it results in better service.

On Friday, a tornado ripped through Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. The airport suffered millions of dollars in damaged and was closed indefinitely on Friday night as officials assessed the situation. My first thought was, “How are we going to get home?”

My wife, Sally, and I had flown into that airport just a few hours earlier for a weekend visit to St. Louis. Our plan was to catch a St. Louis Cardinals game on Saturday and then fly home Sunday afternoon.  Getting home anytime soon now seemed unlikely to happen. We spent Saturday morning watching the news and weighing our options for getting home to San Diego.

We finally left the hotel to get lunch and head to the game. Sally and I took a moment to remind ourselves that the people serving us that day may be facing far greater problems than our transportation worries. Many people in surrounding communities had their homes destroyed by tornadoes on Friday and as many as 30,000 people were still without power.

See the full story here (please excuse the short advertisement):

Throughout the day, we made a point to ask the service employees we encountered if their homes and families were OK. Everyone we met was personally unaffected, but almost everyone had a family member, friend, or co-worker whose home was damaged by the tornado.

A curious thing happened when we asked people how they were doing. They genuinely appreciated our caring and many took a moment to share a brief story about their experience. Their service also demonstrated caring in return through their attentiveness, friendliness, and willingness to go the extra mile. We had made a human to human connection.

The amazing end to the story is the airport re-opened and we caught our Sunday afternoon flight home as planned. Herculean efforts by employees at Lambert Field to resume operations made it all happen and we are grateful to everyone who made our St. Louis trip a great one.

If you’d like to donate to the tornado relief efforts in St. Louis, please visit www.redcrossstl.org.

What the FAA can teach us about icebergs

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been in the news quite a lot lately. The story reminds us to look out for icebergs in our own organizations.

What are icebergs in business? Icebergs are huge problems where only the tip is visible. Hidden from view is a big, nasty problem that can sink your company.

Background
On March 23, an air traffic controller at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport fell asleep on the job. Two planes subsequently landed without any contact with the control tower. No accidents occurred, but the incident caused a national uproar.

Additional reports of employees sleeping on the job quickly surfaced and the uproar intensified. It became clear that there was a widespread problem with chronic fatigue among controllers working overnight shifts. Since late March, eight employees have been suspended and the head of the Air Traffic Organization has resigned.

This ain't new
FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has been making tough statements in response to this problem.

"None of us in this business can ... tolerate any of this," Babbitt said. "It absolutely has to stop."

Unfortunately, Babbitt is either experiencing extreme denial or has been sleeping on duty himself. The FAA has been tolerating or ignoring the chronic fatigue issue for years. Here are just a few examples:

July, 2001. Two planes nearly collided on a runway in Denver due to an air traffic controller error. The controller had worked three shifts in the past two days.

September, 2001. A plane was cleared to land in Denver on a runway closed for construction. The controller had only slept two hours between shifts.

August, 2006. Another near-collision, this time on a runway in Chicago. The controller had gotten only four hours of sleep during a nine hour break between shifts.

April, 2007. The National Transportation Safety Board sent a letter to the FAA that expressed concern over air traffic controller fatigue and made reference to 80 fatigue-related incidents since 1989.

Icebergs become even more dangerous when managers are unwilling or unable to acknowledge their existence. The longer a problem is allowed to continue the more likely it is to end in disaster.

Searching for icebergs
High performance managers are constantly searching for icebergs in their organizations. Here are three things every manager should do at the first sign of a big, nasty problem.

Step 1: Don’t assume it is isolated. Smart managers should go looking for evidence of similar problems. The FAA treated the sleeping controller at Ronald Reagan Washington National as an isolated incident, but there was already a pattern in place. Over the past few weeks, intense national scrutiny has revealed many more troubling examples of chronic controller fatigue.

Step 2: Check to see if the system is broken. Icebergs are usually the result of systematic failures. Controllers sleeping on the job isn't solely due to a few lazy, unprofessional employees. The evidence clearly indicates the FAA has a widespread problem with air traffic controller scheduling and staffing levels.

Step 3: See the bigger picture. Smart managers understand the strategic implications of fixing the problem and others like it. Changing controller schedules and adding staff may help reduce chronic fatigue, but sleeping on the job isn't the only performance problem dogging air traffic controllers. A recent article in the Washington Post reported a 51% increase in recorded errors by air traffic controllers in 2010. The FAA should take a broader view of the situation and identify ways to improve controllers' overall performance.

Searching for examples of outrageous customers

Would you like to be in a book?

I'm searching for examples of outrageous customer behavior for my forthcoming book, The Unnatural Act of Customer Service. (Check out the whitepaper to get a preview.)

Are you a current or former customer service employee? If you worked as a frontline customer service employee, I want to hear from you.

Please post a comment to this blog to submit your story for consideration. Here's what I'd like to know:

1) First name

2) Your job (server, sales associate, etc.)

3) Type of company (restaurant, hotel, call center, etc.)

4) Short story about an outrageous customer's behavior

A few expectations:
If I publish your story it will be first name only to keep it anonymous. I won't be able to include everyone's stories in my book and some may need to be edited for length and clarity. I'll be sure to email you a draft with any edits before putting it in the book.

If your story does make it into the book I'll also send you a free copy.