I think we tend to forget that the most critical element in creating a great customer service experience is giving your people the power to make a great customer service experience.

Read it again this way: if you don’t give your people the power to create awesome customer service experiences they can’t create awesome customer service experiences.

I was at Starbucks this morning, ordering my usual chai tea latte, and I decided to try one of their english muffin breakfast sandwiches. We rang it up and I promptly moved to the other counter where they deliver your order. My tea came out and I took a seat to get out of everyone’s way, figuring my sandwich would take a little longer. A chance for me to check email and relax for a minute. After about 5 minutes I realized the sandwich probably wasn’t coming so I mentioned it to them. They apologized and quickly went about making it and then proceeded to hand me a coupon for a free beverage. It reads:

A cup should never be half empty.
We apologize if your Starbucks experience was anything but wonderful. We want to know how we can make things better and always invite you to share your thoughts with us. The next time we see you, please enjoy a beverage, on us. We hope your next visit is better.

On the back there’s a Customer Relations phone number and web site.

I wasn’t upset about the muffin, Starbucks is very busy in the morning and it’s understandable. But they have empowered their employees to make the decision on when to do the right thing. There wasn’t a manager that had to approve this, as far as I could tell. They just handed me a coupon that will cost them about $4 the next time I visit the store.

Do your policies sometimes get in the way of letting your customers have the best experience they can? Have you empowered your customer facing people to “do the right thing” at all times, letting their discretion and understanding of each unique situation dictate how it’s handled? Do they need to get a lot of levels of approval while the customer seethes? Think about what you can do to break down those barriers and you’ll create more opportunities for truly great customer service experiences with your business.

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It floored me today to read in the PMMI 2009 Customer Attitudes & Behaviors survey that the number one attribute customers look for in an OEM, in addition to the packaging machine, is spare parts availability.

How un-sexy is that? It’s enough to make the sales and product development teams pull their hair out.

When you stop to think about it, however, having spare parts availability as the number one attribute that customers’ value in an OEM makes sense. Only those OEMs with a commitment to the long term success of their customers are going to invest in a robust spare parts program. Those OEMs know that their machines are going to be on the packaging line for five, 10, 20, or 30 years and along with the machine, it’s their reputation that’s on that line. This long-term view may make the price of the machine go up slightly and reduce OEM profits somewhat, but OEMs who know that reputation is the key to success, will commit to a robust support strategy. And it’s not only the spare parts that are important, but also the infrastructure to get those parts delivered quickly. The survey found that North American OEMs had the highest rating for spare parts availability.

Here are some of the other OEM attributes that the 2009 PMMI survey found were top rated. Each one relates in some way to a supplier committed to long-term success, not quarter-by-quarter sales revenue.

• Problem solving-engineering expertise. (This means hiring and retaining the best people)
• Knowledge about materials and machinery fit. (This relates to long years of working at many different customer sites to solve customer-specific problems)
• Overall reputation of a manufacturer. (This is all about doing right by the customer year-after-year and having great products)
• Training and documentation capabilities. (This relates to making the customer successful and earning the right to sell another machine to that that customer)
• After-sales market support. (Once again it’s the long view and knowing that to avoid extinction the OEM must invest in the infrastructure for customer success)

The whole emphasis on spare parts availability is really about wanting to work with an OEM who is going to do what it takes to be around for the next several generations.

Here’s the question: Are spare parts the single most important attribute you look for in the packaging machinery OEM? Vote yes or no. I welcome your comments.

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Three years ago I interviewed the operations and quality manager at the nation’s oldest continuously operating brewery for an article I was writing on robotics for Packaging World magazine. The brewery used robots to automate de-palletizing and palletizing heavy beer kegs entering and leaving the plant. I asked about service from the robotics company and the manager answered, “We’ve received world-class responsiveness in terms of support from the robotics supplier. That level of support ensures that we don’t miss a beat in terms of overall production.”

That quote has stuck with me, because whenever I need support it’s the companies that are available and responsive that I value most. Not too long ago my automated computer back up system stopped working. I went to the supplier’s website and had to scroll through page after page until I found the tech service telephone number. Actually, I finally found it on the parent company’s website. And the support effort went downhill from there. The techs were great to work with, but the problem dragged on because, of all things, the tech’s work shift hardly overlapped my workday leaving a tiny window of opportunity to develop a fix.

The problem was eventually resolved, but when another problem occurred with the same system, I dumped the provider. I did not have the time or patience to work with that company. Besides, I dreaded having to invest the time to find that phone number again.

At a minimum, this is what I look for in terms of a responsive service organization:

• A phone number that is easy to find on the website or attached to the product or documentation.
• If I have to email the supplier, I want the company to acknowledge my email and quickly let me how long I’ll have to wait for a reply.
• When I call, I want to be put through to a support person quickly and with as short a phone message tree as possible.
• I want support hours that correspond to my work day.
• I want the tech support person to share my sense of urgency, to be knowledgeable, and to get a fix rolling ASAP.
• I want to work with a tech support organization that is creative and empowered to provide an out-of-the-box solution if necessary.

When a supplier sells a product to my business, that company implicitly becomes my partner in productivity. Some companies get that, while others don’t. It’s the ones who get it that earn my loyalty and gain the benefit of my endorsement when others ask me for supplier recommendations.

Here’s the question: Is responsiveness the number one thing you value in service and support organizations? Vote yes or no. I welcome your comments.

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Stick with me here, because I’m going to be talking about baby monitors. But I promise I’ll use the example to make a point.

Before we had our first child we researched a lot of different baby monitors before settling in on a system that was a bit pricey – $125 – but got great reviews. We’ve had the system now for over a year and really love it, it has a sensitivity adjustment on it that means we can actually hear the baby breathe if we want (how comforting is THAT in the middle of the night for the new parent?), but it only came with one charger base and you couldn’t buy an extra charger for it at the store.

So I decided to call the company and order an extra charger. I called them up and we walked through the model and part identification process, confirmed the part I needed and she took my shipping information. I realized she had yet to mention price so I asked her how much it cost and started to pull out the credit card, already conceding that “I’ve made it this far so I guess I’ll pay whatever it is.” I’m thinking maybe $20 or $30, tops. She then proceeded to tell me “It’s free – we do this as a service for our customers.”

“I’m sorry. What? It’s free?”

“Yes sir, it’s free as a courtesy to our customers.” Wow. I actually told her “I’m stunned.” She says “It will be there in 5 to 7 business days unless you need it sooner.” I assured her 5 to 7 was fine, thanked her profusely and then called my wife to tell her the good news. A purely delightful customer service experience.

Now I’m sure many of you are reading this saying “they left a lot of money on the table there – aftermarket parts can have a really big markup!” and you’re right – they did leave money on the table with ME. But customer service goes beyond the single customer you interact with – and that’s the key. People who have babies probably have friends who will be having babies and guess who those friends will ask about what the best this and that is?

Do you think any friend of ours won’t get this monitor recommended to them if they ask? Heck they’ll get it recommended to them if they don’t ask. Why? Because I got a free charger? No, it goes way beyond that – they decided that rather than make a nice profit from aftermarket parts, like we’re all want to do – that they would instead focus on creating loyal customers. They empathize with their target market – new parents – and try to make life a little bit easier for them, because they know that their lives are probably a little hectic right now.

Of course, they had a quality product to begin with and that’s important, but remember I wasn’t looking to change, I was already happy. They took a happy customer and turned me into a delighted customer.

Now how do we turn this back to packaging? Simple – remember that you don’t turn customers into advocates when they’re upset, you turn them into advocates when they’re already happy. You turn them into advocates by empathizing with them and occasionally surprising them by going above and beyond even when you aren’t asked to do so.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you need to give away spare parts to create advocates, but the heart of what I’m getting at is this: what could you be doing differently to unexpectedly delight your customers? How do you create your next “above and beyond” moment? How do you turn your apathetic customer into an advocate? Give it some thought, it might not be as hard as you think.

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The Remarkable Communication Blog has a fantastic article on 50 Things Your Customers Wish You Knew – every point is written from a customer’s perspective, which is a viewpoint we could all stand to take more often.

Some of our favorites include:

• Telling me what you don’t know makes me trust you.
• You don’t need to do all that much to be a superhero. Just do exactly what you say you will do.
• I want to tell you what would make this relationship better for me. Why don’t you ever ask me?
• I want you to do the hard work for me. Even better if I can get all the credit.
• I have the attention span of a goldfish. Go too long without contacting me and I’ll simply forget you exist.

When we started trying to figure out how to promote and market ProCustomer internally to our own divisions (to the very people responsible for making ProCustomer a success with our customers) we struggled with what message to tell them. We could put together a nice long 28 page letter listing out all the attributes we wanted to excel at and remind them that was what ProCustomer was about, but at the end of the day how effective would that really be? Another memo stuffed in a drawer.

What we decided to do was much simpler – 6 words. It reads:

Be Easy To Do Business With

If you frame every interaction with a customer with those words, you start to get a pretty clear picture about how you should act and what you should do. The rest should take care of itself.

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Recently, Pat Reynolds, VP/Editor of Packaging World magazine, got to sit down with Mark Anderson, CEO of Pro Mach, to discuss ProCustomer. Click on the video below to see the interview.

Our thanks to Packaging World for taking the time to sit down with us!

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The world loves an early adopter, but it’s looking like early adopters of the new Google Nexus One phone aren’t feeling the love from Google. Google launched the Nexus One on January 5 of this year – it’s first real venture into selling hardware directly to customers on the retail side of the business world, where customer service is crucial. And the early results haven’t been great.

The New York Times posted a great piece about this called “Hey Google, Anybody Home?” that details some of the main issues customers are facing:

• They can’t call Google for help (there is no phone number for support – for a company selling a phone!)
• Emails can take up to 2 to 3 days to get a response
• Some customers have yet to hear from an actual person, just canned responses through email

The tough thing is for a lot of customers their cell phone is their only phone. So being down for a few days before you get support is really problematic. On top of that who do you turn to for support? T-Mobile currently handles the connectivity, HTC makes the phone and Google sells it – so who should be on the hook for support? It’s an ideal he said/she said finger pointing situation.

Now of course Google will get these problems resolved because they have the resources to do so – they are a large, extremely profitable company and they can make this issue go away. But in the short term the lesson is there – you have to be prepared to support it from day one. Google may have a little room for error here because their philosophy has always been more “launch early and iterate often” but while that works well for the software side of the business, the hardware side is a different story.

For a successful case study in that look no further than to Nexus One’s main competitor – the Apple iPhone – launched in June 2007. Apple was going out through a new channel – namely AT&T retail stores, and knew that their success hinged on a successful launch, roll out and customer experience. AT&T wasn’t exactly known for a stellar in-store experience at the time, so Apple and AT&T worked together to improve the AT&T retail experience for iPhone customers. They even put out a document to all AT&T retail stores on training just for the launch of the iPhone (see the 68 page PDF here). Granted, Apple’s main business is in selling hardware directly to consumers, but they knew that coming out of the gates they had to do everything they could to make sure the customer service experience was as good as the product. Google will get there, and the early technology adopters will pave the way for a better experience for the more mainstream consumers down the road.

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The 2009 Customer Attitudes & Behaviors study from PMMI, www.pmmi.org, has detailed the most desired attributes of packaging machinery manufacturers according to the end users interviewed for the study. Of the top 6 attributes, three involve customer service, including spare parts availability (number 1), training and documentation (number 5) and after-sales market support (number 7).

The study is a good reflection of the values packaging machinery manufacturers need to present to their customers to be highly competitive and customer service rates high on the list.

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In 1983, on his second day on the job, the new CEO of a company gathered his people and said:

“Tomorrow when you come to work, you do not work for me or for a boss. You work for your customer. I don’t pay you. They do. Every customer has its own factory now. You do what is needed for the customer.”

And just like that FAVI, an auto parts supplier in France, went from a centralized organization to a flat organization.

The paradigm shift worked. Accountability is to the customer and to the team, so people are free to innovate and solve problems for customers. Read the entire article on FAVI over at the American Express Open Forum.

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A customer called us recently to say the machine we installed a month prior had run smoothly at peak throughput and then suddenly started having real problems. We rushed out a service technician and within 15 minutes the machine was back up to speed. The problem was that an operator had forgotten how to make a particular adjustment that he’d been taught during training at start up. This experience with the customer drove home the point that one training session at start up is simply not enough for most operators. People do not retain all the key facts of operating a machine after a single introductory session.

Over the years, we’ve found the optimum schedule for learning to be an introduction at the plant during start up, a follow up session the next day, and a third time a week later. Most of the training is done at the customer’s plant between the supplier technician and the customer’s staff. If the training can be at the supplier facility, the result would be greater. If that sounds like too much training, compare it to the alternative in machine downtime and lower than expected throughput.

Obviously, time spent away from the plant is difficult to arrange because staffs are so lean. Training at the supplier facility, however, provides the optimum learning environment because personnel are not distracted by day-to-day responsibilities. Try the three-step approach to training for a few pieces of critical equipment and then compare the operational results to other lines at the plant where training was limited to one session at start up. I believe you will find a significant difference in productivity between the two methods.

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