Good Customer Service For Dummies?

Customer Inter@ction Solutions, Oct 2006 by Tehrani, Rich

Lessons From Lewis Black, Richard Branson And A No-Fog Hotel Mirror

By way of an advance explanation, let me say that this column will depart from my usual piece; I found inspiration this month not only from the contact center industry, but from another publication. I had never before read Fast Company Magazine and may never have started if I didn't come across an issue of the publication featuring comedian Lewis Black on the cover. If you aren't familiar with Black, he is a comedian who spends much of his time being angry and not censoring his true feelings - including profanity, which he spews out at a rapid clip. I find him funny. He makes a lot of great points and seems to be able to take ordinary material and deliver it in such a way that his audience invariably winds up in stitches.

As I perused the September 2006 issue of Fast Company, I noticed there were a few customer service articles. Even better, the Lewis Black article was devoted to customer service. I found the quantity of customer service articles interesting, as the issue also covered topics such as fluorescent light bulbs. Still, the content was well written, and I will likely pick up more copies of the magazine in the future.

For now, I thought I would share some highlights of the various articles with you. The first was titled "The Enlightenment of Richard Branson" (www.tmcnet.com/359.1). The articles most interesting theme was that Branson, the colorful CEO of Britain's Virgin Group, which owns Virgin Atlantic Airlines and Virgin Records, went into business not to make a lot of money, but instead because his experiences as a customer were dire and he wanted to launch businesses he and his friends would enjoy patronizing.

For example, he once had the experience of wanting to speak to a pretty girl on a flight, but was stuck in his seat until the plane landed. This was the inspiration for the stand-up bars on many Virgin Atlantic flights. Not all his decisions were based on his own desires as a customer, however. It was his wife's manicurist who suggested offering nail treatments and massages on flights. Branson didn't perform any market research, he merely decided that this was a good idea, and now there are 700 therapists on the Virgin Atlantic staff. Ironically, I am writing this column on a non-Virgin flight and have nagging back pain. What I wouldn't give to have one of those therapists on this plane!

Part of the irony in Virgin Atlantic's ascent to greatness is that when Branson wanted to equip his existing airplanes with $8 million in built-in seat TV screens so passengers could watch whatever programming they wanted, he found that banks would not loan him the money for this endeavor. Instead, Branson got the banks to loan Virgin $2 billion dollars for a fleet of brand new planes - with the screens included!

The moral of Branson's story is simple. As he puts it, "Don't rip people off and they'll happily stay your customer." One final word of advice from Branson: "Take a look at your business and ask yourself, 'Is this how I would want to be treated if I were a customer?'"

Another great customer service success story highlighted by Fast Company is that of the Mandarin Oriental hotel and, specifically, the branch in Manhattan that I was lucky enough to visit recently when I covered a salesforce.com event.

What makes the hotel so special is the way it treats customers. "A thousand little details delivered through a combination of high tech and high pamper," according to company CEO Wolfgang Hultner.

You want examples? How about a distributed antenna system in the building so cell phone calls aren't dropped? A heated mirror that doesn't fog up when you shower? The temperature of the : room is preset to your precise preference before you arrive, and the temperature in your local ZIP code is displayed on the telephone in the room.

What sets the service apart, though, is what the company does on the rare occasions when they do make a mistake - they make up for it by overcompensating. When an occasional error occurs, a message goes out over the hotel's rapid response system, apologies are quickly sent and the problem is corrected - and then some.

Employees are paid based on the quality of their service, a refreshing detail in the hotel business. There is more, of course, but if you want all the juicy details you should read the Fast Company article for yourself (www.tmcnet.com/358.1).

Now for the icing on the cake - the interview with Lewis Black (www.tmcnet.com/360.1 ). Black, as I mentioned earlier, gets riled up so easily that many readers may dismiss his ranting as hype, failing to notice by their own experience that customer service is indeed getting worse. Thankfully, people like Black do the noticing for us. Lewis doesn't miss a trick. He details his aggravation at not being able to get a live operator to answer the phone when he calls directory assistance. He observes that, from the time he was born, American businesses have been so focused on the bottom line that they have forgotten to think about service as service.