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ISSUE: 2nd Quarter 2009
CUSTOMER-FIRST SERVICECan It Lead The Industry Through A Recession? By David Lucas
Industries such as airlines, cable companies, and cell phone firms have gained a reputation in some circles for their perceived poor customer service. A popular radio and TV personality labels the customer care in these industries as “customer no-service,” because their consumers receive attention that is less than satisfactory. While individual companies representing these industries offer exemplary service, they are lumped in with their brethren who are frequent targets of multiple customer complaints for recurring problems. “The way you run your business can positively or negatively impact the image of the whole industry,” says Debra J. Schmidt of Loyalty Leader,Inc., in Milwaukee, Wis. “Every call you respond to, every contact you make, every marketing message you print, and every service or product you deliver caries with in the responsibility of professionalism.” Mobile self-storage is a young industry that is creating an image in the minds of its customer as well as the consuming public. To date, an industry that is operated b entrepreneurs, small business owners, franchises, and public REITs appears to be delivering excellent customer care and has avoided any service stigma. “We have done a good job thus far,” says Dusty Rhodes, vice president of business development for SmartBox Portable Self Storage in Richmond, Va. He warns, however, that if portable storage operators take their eyes off the ball—in this case, the customer—the industry could suffer a similar fate to others that have lost their way. “Just as a lack of customer focus gave the moving and rental truck industries a bad image in the eyes of many consumers, portable storage needs to keep its eyes fixed on putting the customer first,” he says. “If we don’t, we may fail victim to some of the same things that happened in the moving industry. It’s important for us to be consistent from top to bottom, whether you’re a small player or the largest franchisor,” Finding The Right People Rhodes adds that portable storage’s business model adds a level of flexibility and convenience that moving and storage companies can’t provide. For example, a full-service mover will give the customer an estimate for the cost of services before the move. When the goods are delivered to the new house, the final bill may be dramatically higher than the original estimate because the actual weight of the items was more or customer changes added to the overall expense. “When we survey our customers, they value, both on the local side and long-distance moving, having guaranteed pricing,” Rhodes says. “It’s another level of convenience the full service mover has a hard time providing. Because they can’t give a guaranteed price, if they estimate it wrong, the customer will be unhappy.” Right out of the box, portable operators must find the best people to deliver customer-first service. “It starts with hiring,” Rhodes says. “We help our franchisees with the hiring process. We give them the methodology for finding and hiring the right people.” But hiring people with the best fit is dicey considering human resources rules, government regulations, and potential litigation. “Finding the right people is difficult and it will never be easy because of what we can’t ask,” says Nancy Friedman of the Telephone Doctor in St. Louis, Mo., who frequently presents customer service seminars at state professional associations. You can’t ask most of the personal questions that might reveal how potential employees would interact with customers and fellow employees, or whether they will show up for work every day. “Testing is one thing you can do—giving them personality profiles. Those are hard to cheat on,” Friedman says. For personnel who work the phones, be sure to test their phone skills. “Give them a phone test; have them call in to hear how their voice sounds,” Friedman says. “You don’t hire somebody not knowing how they’re going to sound on the phone.” Managers should serve as their own mystery shoppers by calling their offices from time to time to ask for themselves by name or request information about a product or service. This provides insight into how the general public is served by a business. These kinds of calls not only reveal employee behavior and attitude, but they also provide observations on how well they close the deal. “I would say 99 percent of the time the person answering the phone gives the information and hangs up,” Friedman says. “They’re not getting a name, address, or phone number. They feel they’ve done a good job by giving the information, and that’s not going to cut it. Very few people do what we call capturing the call.” Training Is Key The key to customer-first service is training. That means every staff member. “There are a lot of businesses laying people off, but you still have employees and customers, so you don’t ever want to stop your training,” says Friedman, who was a featured speaker at the 2003 Inside Self Storage conference. “One of the important components of our business is training and support for our franchisees,” Rhodes says. “We provide training for all their key personnel. We do that for their administrative person, their driver, and manager.” Most times, the face of the operation is the driver who delivers the containers and interacts with the customer. “They’re going to look at him and say he’s neatly dressed; he talks nice; he’s smiling; he’s got a nice personality,” says Friedman. “He should not be ignored in training; he’s the most important one.” SmartBox addresses the driver in its franchise training. “Our franchises will hire mainly class-A drivers and they have a higher skill level,” Rhodes says. “It’s important to train them and have very high standards around that. Some of that is hard skills: How do you drive a forklift properly? But we also train them on soft skills: How do you deal with customers?” Friedman says good customer service should involve listening skills. “Questioning skills become very important,” she says. Joliet Ill.-based Mi-Box Storage takes these recommendations to heart. “All of our people are trained to carefully listen to each customer’s needs and wants, ask specific questions to eliminate potential issues, and be courteous and on time when making deliveries,” says Michael C. Bjorn, vice president of Mi-Box. Taking personal ownership of a customer’s needs or issues is part of the Mi-Box culture. “From the moment a customer calls, each Mi-Box location servicing that customer’s area answers the phone,” Bjorn says. “Our customers respond positively when speaking with a local Mi-Box agent who knows their area, speaks similarly, and can relate to them on a personal level.” A single point of contact helps to assure that sense of ownership. “Our customers will always speak to the same person,” Bjorn says. “From inquiry, schedule changes, billing questions, to the time we thank them for their business, the same agent develops a personal relationship with each customer. If any issues arise, our customers have a direct line of communication with the same Mi-Box person. Having one point of contact allows any issues to be resolved quickly, accurately, and appropriately.” Effectiveness Over Efficiency Like most industries, mobile storage depends on efficiency to turn a profit. Operators must carefully plan daily routes efficiently to save on labor and fuel. But an overemphasis on efficiency can be detrimental to customer service, so operators must strike a careful balance. One industry that has been bedeviled by a poor customer service image is the customer call center business. A major contributor to the industry’s image appears to be an emphasis on greater efficiency. Ross Daniels, a director for Cisco Systems, lamented this problem in an industry newsletter. “One of the biggest challenges that customer care organizations face is setting a careful balance between a focus on efficiency and a focus on effectiveness,” Daniels writes. “Contact centers are over weighted on efficiency, and customer satisfaction is suffering as a result. While finding the right balance between efficiency and effectiveness is not always easy, the contact center industry for too long has been out of balance, focusing too often on efficiency at the expense of effectiveness that builds long-term customer satisfaction.” An important part of the customer service equation in portable storage is balancing customer expectations with the operator’s desire for efficiency. Rhodes says this situation may affect fewer than 10 percent of mobile customers. “Typically that’s an area where we really haven’t seen any customer service problems,” he says. “You manage expectations as to when you can get things to the customer. If somebody absolutely has to have their boxes delivered first thing in the morning, we may call other customers who want their boxes that day and ask, ‘Do you mind if we drop off your box at nine instead of eight o’clock?’ If you’re upfront with them, they are more than willing to be flexible.” Technology Can Boost Service Sometimes striving for greater efficiency can be a boon to customer service. More companies are using technology in that pursuit. Truck drivers for a major food distributor call into an interactive voice response system to update delivery status in real time. If a shipment is running late, an account manager is automatically notified and can update the customer on the shipment’s expected arrival. A potential customer satisfaction issue is turned into a positive. “You have the ability to leverage technology in such a way that it enables you to provide better service: helping customers know where their goods are at all times; being able to leverage the Internet so customers can pay their bills online,” Rhodes says. “We have operations management software that allows us to more quickly get boxes from our storage centers out to customers.” Mi-Box employs Global Positioning System (GPS), a popular technology that is increasing in use and dropping in price. “Our operations managers know exactly where every driver is at all times by our FAST GPS tracking system,” Bjorn says. “This allows us to tell any customer, in real time, where we are at any point of their service route and give them an exact time when we will arrive. Internally, it allows our operations managers the ability to pull up any driver’s routes, at any point in history, with the exact time our drivers arrive at their location. Knowing every driver’s whereabouts is essential to a fast, accurate, schedule tracking system.” Rhodes adds, “The most important thing is you’re providing transparency to customers. It’s important for them to know their goods are safe and secure.” Follow-Up Service After the sale is made, companies that exemplify first-rate customer service will usually follow up with a letter, phone call, or even a small gift. “When a customer completes their stay with us, we like to send them a personal thank-you card for using our services,” Bjorn says. “We want them to know that Mi-Box appreciates their business and values each customer. A simple thank-you can go a long way in any business.” The Phone Doctor naturally recommends getting on the horn. “Instead of a welcome letter, we suggest a phone call,” Friedman says. “After you get the account, phone the next day and say, ‘I want to thank you for being a good customer. We’re here and we’ll take care of your household goods.’” She adds that a handwritten note thanking the customer for the order is better than a formal typewritten letter, which can be mistaken for junk mail. No company is perfect, and businesses have long known that some of their best customers are the ones who lodged complaints in the past. “What counts is when you get a complaint and you act on it,” Friedman says. “You get a second chance, and we don’t get it that often.” Mi-Box guarantees each initial delivery to be on time or it’s free. “We strive to earn the respect of every customer by exceeding their expectations through our words and actions,” Bjorn says. The consequences of poor service are obvious, yet they should be stated. “Simply put, if you don’t have strong customer service, ultimately customers will leave you and go somewhere else,” Rhodes says. “Your brand can be negatively affected and you cannot be seen as a good part of the local community.” “The pitfall of not putting your customers first is simple. Customers have choices and they will use them, if you give them a reason,” says Bjorn. This is especially true during a recession. “Customer retention is essential for survival in a weak economy,” Schmidt says. The level of service needs to be escalated, and she recommends that customers receive a promise to speak with a live person when they call and offered faster response times on their requests. “When the economy is weak, you need to strengthen your customer service delivery,” Schmidt says. “Now more than ever, it’s essential to do everything possible to keep your customers from leaving. In order for companies to maintain stability, every employee needs to focus more time and energy on making customers happy.” For a developing industry such as mobile self-storage, operators and their staff need to maintain a focus on listening to the customers and responding to their needs better than other moving and storage options available to them. By putting the customer first, the mobile self-storage industry has the potential to grow stronger, take market share, and prosper during the toughest test operators have faced in their young history. Four Steps To Build Customer Relationships Debra J. Schmidt of Loyalty Leader, Inc., believes too many businesses today are task-oriented rather than relationship-oriented. Focus on your customers rather than paperwork, meetings, and other tasks you are asked to complete each day, she advises.
DL David Lucas is a freelance writer and editor based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is also the News Editor for the Mini-Storage Messenger. |
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