If you don’t know who Guy Kawasaki is you can pretty much learn everything you need to know about him from the title of his blog – “How to Change the World.” A big thinker, yes, but also very grounded. He’s one of the best business minds of this generation and he has a pretty simple philosophy on the “art” of customer service – and let’s face it, it is an art sometimes more than a science. His 10 points:

1. Start at the top.
2. Put the customer in control.
3. Take responsibility for your shortcomings.
4. Don’t point the finger.
5. Don’t finger the pointer.
6. Don’t be paranoid.
7. Hire the right kind of people.
8. Under promise and over deliver.
9. Integrate customer service into the mainstream.
10. Put it all together.

In his blog post he goes into detail on each of the points, so check out The Art of Customer Service. Though it was written about 3 1/2 years ago good customer service principles never go out of style.

The only point I think is really missing from the list is “Let the customer know they were heard.” This is a very important step. This doesn’t always mean answering their question super fast because the right answer can take a lot of time depending on your business and the complexity of the question itself – and it’s more important to answer correctly and thoroughly in as few steps as possible. What it does mean is acknowledging as quickly as possible to the customer that you have heard what they want and that you are working on it. Bonus points if you frame for them exactly when they can expect your full answer. Letting them know they were heard goes a long way to putting the customer in the right frame of mind.

What other points help craft your customer service “art” in your business?

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With today’s lean operations and even leaner budgets for preventive maintenance, machines begin to experience performance issues over time. Line and maintenance personnel, who may or may not have been factory trained, typically respond to these problems by making adjustments and/or swapping out parts. Then comes the day when a problem becomes catastrophic and all the customer can do is rush to telephone the machine’s supplier.

At this point, responsiveness on the part of the supplier becomes essential. Under intense pressure for a resolution, the last thing the customer needs is an extensive phone tree, a voice mail for a person out for the day, or a service representative on other end of the phone who does not share their sense of urgency.

Putting systems in place to respond to urgent customer calls cannot be an afterthought on the part of the supplier. The supplier must design a response system that can be measured for effectiveness and continuously improved. Support personnel must be trained and then evaluated on how well they perform to expectations. Above all, the response system must reassure the customer that the supplier understands the problem and will work quickly to solve it. Solutions include same day or next day parts delivery or sending a field technician who is familiar with the plant. Effective response systems require the backing of the supplier’s senior management because responsiveness ultimately relies on sufficient resources, and senior management must allocate and support those resources.

In a perfect world, every customer large and small would devote themselves to thorough preventive maintenance programs and on going training. But this isn’t a perfect world. It is up to suppliers to cultivate a culture that ensures that machine uptime is a priority for every customer and every location where the machine is installed.

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Great client service consists of these five elements:

• manage client expectations
• maintain high availability
• practice courtesy and respect
• practice honesty in all communications
• be proactive in your service

This is a summary of a great SitePoint article Give Great Service: 5 Essential Tips. SitePoint is a web site that focuses on providing information to web developers and designers, particularly the freelance segment. You’re probably thinking “Web designers? Freelancers? How does that apply to my company?” Well customer service is customer service, no matter the industry, no matter if you’re a large company or a lone freelancer. And this article really focuses on fundamentals.

Read the whole article and you’ll find you’re nodding your head a lot going “Yeah… of course… well, duh.” But really turn that notion of obviousness and shine it back on your company. Are you delivering on the points in the article all the time? Consistently? Is there room for improvement?

Every now and then it’s good to get a refresher, and this is a good one.

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Field service technicians are often independent self starters who thrive outside the company structure. These highly analytical individuals have a laser like concentration that focuses on repairing the machine. Their ability to concentrate on the task at hand does at times keep the field service technician from seeing all the possibilities for helping the customer improve overall productivity over the long term.

Field service technicians are the eyes and ears of the equipment supplier in actual operating conditions. They are uniquely positioned to determine whether the customer’s operators are properly trained to keep the supplier’s machines in peak condition for optimum productivity, if the recommended preventive maintenance procedures are being followed, and if the customer has enough replacement parts on hand.

The best doctors are those who not only have the medical knowledge, but also the interpersonal skills to help them understand the whole person. In other words, they effectively treat both the person and the symptoms. Likewise, the field service technician who truly stands out is the one who is able to see and correct the immediate problem as well as suggest ways of keeping other issues from cropping up.

If aftermarket service is going to reach the next level of achievement, service managers, field service technicians, and customers must work together to find ways of building onto the good traits of the field service technician by adding a few more, such as the ability to see the bigger picture. This will not be an easy discussion to have because of the traditional mindset of get in, fix it, and get out. It is a discussion that we must have, however, because fixing the immediate problem is no longer enough. It is incumbent on the supplier to work with the customer to identify and correct the root causes of problems. Do that and productivity improves, while overall maintenance costs shrink.

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iContact, the email software provider of choice for the divisions of Pro Mach, had some serious issues a few months ago with downtime with their application due to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks across the internet.

Obviously they’re sensitive to their customer needs so they fully disclosed everything that happened in an email to their customers and what they were doing to resolve it. Proactively. They didn’t wait for the situation to clear up – they addressed it as soon as they realized what was going on. They communicated every step of the way and from an end user perspective, I can tell you I appreciated knowing what was going on.

The email included headings such as “How We Are Addressing the Remaining Issues” and “What Happened” and “Updates & How You Can Reach Us” – they also linked to resources about these kind of attacks so we could learn more.

Here’s the full letter that their CEO sent out to their customer base.

Transparency means you don’t have anything to hide. You share with your customers, you communicate with them, you tell them what’s going on, you tell them you’re not always perfect. The strange thing is that the customer has more of a chance to become an advocate when they realize you’re not perfect. Transparency creates trust. Of course customers don’t ever want a less than perfect situation with their suppliers, but they inevitably do happen. It’s how you react that shows the customer what you’re really made of and that shapes how they perceive you long term.

What can you do to be more transparent with your customers?

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Preventive maintenance often resides far down the list of things to do. That seems to be even truer today as the number of maintenance personnel shrinks in proportion to total operational staff. Lately, we’ve seen a number of customers that are having a cascading number of problems all stemming from lack of a consistently applied preventive maintenance.

On the larger and most complex pieces of equipment, there are key components that, if properly maintained, should last the lifetime of the machine – literally decades. Without regular maintenance, however, these components can wear out in a fraction of that time. In some instances, the customers replace these key components with counterfeits, which can wear out in as little as 12 to 18 months. Rather than a machine operating at near peak efficiency for many years through proper maintenance, it instead becomes a drag on productivity and staff resources.

My advice is to start with the strategic pieces of equipment on the packaging line and have the supplier come in and audit the machine’s current condition, identify components that need attention, and set up a preventive maintenance schedule. If you don’t employ people to maintain the machine, have the supplier’s technicians perform regular service, or take advantage of a program where you can send your components back to the manufacturer for maintenance. On average the cost of having an outside service technician come in on a regular basis for a key piece of equipment will be a fraction of the overall expense in downtime and low throughput.

I know that regular maintenance to supplier specifications appears hard to accomplish while trying to run a production facility. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. They are not. Try devoting some time to work with key suppliers to determine preventive maintenance solutions. Do so and packaging operations will undoubtedly achieve better bottom line results.

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An absolutely great video here from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. In case you haven’t heard Amazon is the model of success on the internet. They’re profitable, customer driven, and they just “get it.”

Amazon has recently acquired Zappos.com, another company that we love because they put the customer first. Bezos put together this 8 minute video to let Zappos and the world know how he thinks. It’s a great piece in praise of the customer that I think we can all learn from.

The key takeaways?

1. Obsess Over Customers – Above everything else obsess over your customers. Put your energy into your customers and everything else will fall into place.
2. Invent – Listen to your customers and invent on their behalf, because it’s not their job to invent for themselves.
3. Think Long-Term – Initiatives (such as obsessing over the customers and inventing) can take a long time to pay dividends to your company, though they may pay dividends to the customer right away. Disruptive innovation only works if you think long-term.
4. It’s Always Day 1 – There are always new ways to obsess over customers and new ways to invent and innovate. Never rest.

What rules does your business live by?

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We’re excited to be launching ProCustomer today. ProCustomer represents over a year of research, planning and execution. ProCustomer is structured and consistent customer service, created with high standards that we are continuously working to improve. ProCustomer is for our customers – if you do business with a Pro Mach division, then you’ll experience ProCustomer first hand. ProCustomer comes with the message that we are investing in our business and in you, our customers.

This blog represents a new way of thinking for us as well. In addition to Pro Mach-focused blog posts we’ll also be sharing our thoughts and links to customer service best practices, wisdom and issues across all industries. We’re constantly researching what’s going on outside of our own companies and we’ll share that here with you. We encourage your feedback and comments as well and we’ll work hard to stimulate conversation and thinking in what we post.

Since this is the official first post we thought it was only fair that we include our official ProCustomer Launch Press Release. Though self serving, it may help you better understand ProCustomer. We look forward to hearing from you.

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Cincinnati, OH – Pro Mach, Inc. launched ProCustomer today, a new initiative designed to ensure that customers maintain peak packaging system productivity through best-in-class standards in aftermarket parts, service, and support.

ProCustomer is the assurance that all customer service, technical support, training, product upgrades, and parts programs provided by Pro Mach divisions adhere to consistent standards of excellence. These standards are based on in-depth customer research and industry best practices. All 11 Pro Mach divisions deliver service and support that meets or exceeds 13 key attributes for reactive, interactive, and proactive care, with an emphasis on improving packaging line productivity.

Pro Mach senior management believes the support requirements of customers for world-class productivity and highest overall equipment efficiency (OEE) will only become more varied and extensive over time because of the changing demographics in the North American workforce, a shift in consumer buying behavior due to the recession, mandated carbon footprint reductions and water regulations, and an increasingly competitive global economy. These trends will require ProCustomer to continually improve and broaden beyond the initial 13 service and support attributes.

“Adhering to best practices will ensure that customers have the support to maintain peak productivity,” said Mark Anderson, president and CEO, Pro Mach, Inc. “Importantly, ProCustomer is designed to be flexible with individual goals suited to the needs of each customer. ProCustomer is the latest in a series of strategic initiatives, which include operations excellence, product excellence, customer service excellence, and distribution excellence.”

To learn more about ProCustomer, including the attributes that make up ProCustomer and to read a new white paper on the trends stimulating the need for standards in aftermarket service, visit www.ProCustomer.com. Those interested in learning more about Pro Mach and its business units should visit www.ProMachInc.com

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