TexasPundit

During the course of my work, I often am presented with problems that seem simple to solve.

1. Identify the issue
2. Isolate the cause of the issue
3. Address the cause of the issue (typically a breakdown in a process)
4. Test to verify that the process changes have fixed the issue
5. Congratulate yourself for solving the issue so efficiently

Seems simple doesn’t it? But it’s become more and more apparent to me that some issues can’t be solved by simple process or organizational changes. Customer support is a perfect example of this.

My company has been struggling with this issue for a few months now. I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about this over the last few days and I’ve come to the conclusion that no amount of process changes or organizational changes will result in improving customer support. What is necessary is a cultural change, in which customer support becomes the focus not just within the support organization, but across the entire company and all the groups.

A good example of this is Rackspace. They market their entire company not on technology, price, or facilities, but rather on “Fanatical Support”. I admire how they’ve made customer support such a big part of their culture - and ask myself the following questions:

• Do they offer better facilities than my company? No.
• Do they offer better network connectivity than my company? No.
• Do they have technology that is vastly different than what my company offers? No.
• Are they cheaper than my company? Absolutely No.
• Are customers more confident that they’ll receive better support from Rackspace? Absolutely Yes.

A couple of years ago, I might have argued that our support was just as good as Rackspace’s. Why have things changed? Some of our customers think it’s because the people we hire aren’t as good. I don’t agree. We’ve invested time and money into training our employees so that they’re equipped with the knowledge to tackle the issues our customers have. We’ve also over the years learned to vet potential hires better, so we have less failed hires than we used to. Ultimately I think the issue really comes down to the fact that when you’re a small company, there’s a mentality that permeates the team that they are important, and have the ability to make differences in a big way to impact the company’s success. They’re excited about working for a new company that’s growing quickly, and being part of that success. As companies grow larger I believe that the new employees that come in lack this excitement and enthusiasm, and only view their job as just that - a job. Because we’re bigger, their ability to have a big impact on the company’s success seems diminished.

So the big question is - how do we break this mentality and build a culture that values customer support above all else? My views:

1. Indoctrinate your new hires. Spend 2 weeks hammering into them the importance of customer service in our industry. Make it part of the employee orientation so that they know from the first day that they start working here that we value our customers, and we do not tolerate employees that do not. Make them excited about working here.
2. Reward employees for service excellence. This means making sure that the proper systems are in place to track employee performance, and customer surveys are done following issues to get feedback on not just the employees performance, but the company’s performance as well.
3. Don’t punish creativity. If an employee breaks a few rules or processes to solve the customer’s issue then be willing to look at why he had to break those rules or processes in order to remedy the problem. Maybe the rules or processes shouldn’t be there in the first place?
4. Provide career paths to the entry level and mid level support technicians so that they don’t look to leave the company once they’ve acquired the skills necessary to do a good job. Partner with our vendors to train and certify our employees - and reward them when they achieve these certifications. Well trained and intelligent employees will be more productive than warm bodies.
5. Reinforce across all groups that we are a services company. We are not a technology company, or a software company, or a hardware company. We are a utility company to many of our customers. They rely on us to provide services 24/7/365 (that’s 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year) and their livelihoods depend on us delivering the services they are buying from us. We need to feel the pain they feel when they’re having issues and work with them to resolve their issues as quickly and accurately as possible.

I’ve probably missed some things here, but my point is this: Customer service is a mindset, not a process. Unless you change the mindset of your company, all the organizational changes and process changes in the world will have little if any impact to your overall performance in this area.

Our industry has very few differentiators between competitors. The hardware pricing is basically commoditized, and the key differentiators are facilities, network infrastructure, management tools, and customer service. I believe that we are the leaders in the first 3 key areas, but that we have a long way to go on the last.