Paul Jacobson

I have spent a little time looking at alternative customer service techniques and it occurred to me that there may be a very interesting alternative method of attending to legal queries that come into a law firm.  For the most part a client will bring a problem either to a specific attorney with the intention that the attorney deal with the issue or the client will approach that attorney knowing that the matter will be handed to someone else.  Either way, the usual practice is for one attorney to take the lead on the matter and perhaps involve a colleague.  The bottom line is that the matter will go to one person who will be responsible for the matter.

What about having an instruction come into a firm and opened up to all the attorneys on the basis that everyone could pitch in behind the scenes and perhaps bring a greater diversity of opinion to the party with the end result that the client will benefit from various perspectives and a strong (I would hope) culture of teamwork in the firm?  Wouldn’t this be an interesting exercise?

Of course such an approach would have a knock-on effect for the firm’s culture which would have to place greater emphasis on teamwork rather than on billable hours and budgets for the individual lawyers and suchlike.  The emphasis would be on value added and not how many hours one lawyer spent on the matter.  That wouldn’t be such a terrible thing either.

By the way, if the format of this post looks a little different it is because I am trying out a different blog editor called Qumana

Tags: alternative approach to legal problems, teamwork, billable hours, team effort, law firm.

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Christopher Carfi from The Social Customer referred me to this post on his blog suggesting a departure from the traditional triage approach to customer services which he describes as follows:

In emergency and battlefield situations, triage (another definition here) is usually performed in order to best prioritize need and allocate scarce resources. In many modern customer support organizations, a similar idea is used. In customer support orgs, this is usually referred to as “Level 1,” “Level 2,” and “Level 3″ support. While the definitions vary, these three support levels are usually defined as some variant on the following:

Level 1: The Level 1 support team is the first point of contact in the incident response process. Customer service personnel are responsible for call handling, triage, problem characterization, and resolution of basic problems. Oftentimes, Level 1 Support answers questions by consulting lists of frequently-asked questions (FAQs).

Level 2: The Level 2 support team is staffed with support engineers assigned by product type. The support engineers are responsible for lab-based simulation, difficult problem resolution, defect correction or escalation management to Level 3 support.

Level 3: The Level 3 support team is staffed with senior analysts, program managers, and development engineers dedicated to working on the critical problems. They are responsible for confirmation of defects, including complex failures, performing interoperability studies, and enacting engineering level changes to permanently resolve any issues in released products.

Instead, Carfi recommended an approach suggested by David Weinberger in The Cluetrain Manifesto in his example of the hyperlinked organisation:

Here’s one example of how things work in a hyperlinked organization: You’re a sales rep in the Southwest who has a customer with a product problem. You know that the Southwest tech-support person happens not to know anything about this problem. In fact, she’s a flat-out bozo. So, to do what’s right for your customer, you go outside the prescribed channels and pull together the support person from the Northeast, a product manager you respect, and a senior engineer who’s been responsive in the past (no good deed goes unpunished!). Via e-mail or by building a mini-Web site on an intranet, you initiate a discussion, research numbers, check out competitive solutions, and quickly solve the customer’s problem - all without notifying the “appropriate authorities” of what you’re doing because all they’ll do is try to force you back into the official channels.

This approach makes more sense to me than the triage approach, irrespective of how well the triage approach may work, mainly because you are presenting the issue to a wider audience within your organisation and there may well be people who can better deal with the issue than the people left sitting in the call centre.  Depending on how the call centre staff are selected, they may also not be the people who actively work on the product or in the service department each day and may not have the best answers anyway.

Carfi made a few really good suggestions including publishing an RSS feed of incoming issues that is fed to everyone dealing with that product; rotating staff in and out of the call centre to ensure that everyone participates in this process and publishing solutions to queries as part of a growing knowledgebase.

The one thing I’d watch out for is making sure that employees don’t spend all their time watching the feed and less time doing the other work.  One way to deal with this may be to delay the feeds by half an hour to an hour or so or even to stagger the feeds.  Works for me and my email.  I find that if I only download email every half hour or so I spend less time watching my inbox and more time working.  My email is attended to too, just not in realtime.

Technorati Tags: cluetrain manifesto, customer is always right, david weinberger, social customer

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I was looking through some flagged posts that I haven’t really dealt with yet and came two posts talking about a more customer-centric approach to customer service (sounds a little silly when I put it like that - what I mean is letting customers drive your service rather than what you, as a provider, feel should drive your service for the customer’s benefit).  These posts take a different line to my previous post on this topic.

The first post is a post by Guy Kawasaki titled “The Art of Customer Service” which sets out some important guidelines.  Here is a summary of those guidelines:

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 maintstream.

Christopher Carfi of the Social Customer emphasises number 2.  Here is what Kawasaki has to say under that item:

The best kind of customer service happens when management enables employees to put the customer in control. This require two leaps of faith: first, that management trusts customers not take advantage of the situation; second, that management trust employees with this empowerment. If you can make these leaps, then the quality of your customer service will zoom; if not, there is nothing more frustrating than companies copping the attitude that something is “against company policy.??

To me this is where it all comes back to the customer being right although in a slightly different sense.  As I understand this principle, this is more about the customer being right because you leave it up to the customer to determine the level of service he/she wants in tandem with your willingness to walk the extra mile if that is what the customer wants.  I think what I had a difficulty with is a customer demanding something that requires a sacrifice of what the provider stands for.  Perhaps the two approaches are not so far apart and what separates them is the difference between a mediocre provider and an excellent provider that practices real customer service?

Technorati Tags: customer is always right, customer service, guy kawasaki, social customer

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Before I left the academic life of post-graduate studies in law and entered the working world as an indentured labourer for a large Sandton law firm, I worked in varying capacities for a large retail chain that has since been sold and re-sold a couple times over.  As with most retail outfits, certainly at the time, the motto was “the customer is always right” and business was conducted on that basis.  At times things went well and the customer really was right.  Other times the customer most certainly was not and some grovelling was required to maintain the illusion that the red-faced jerk at the other side of the counter really was right.  What made it worse was that the latter type of customer really bought into this notion that he/she was always right and expected to be treated as if this was some kind of hereditary entitlement.

Seth Godin adds an interesting twist to this myth.  Stew Leonard’s is a massive dairy outfit and one of the things it is famous for is the rock you see to the right which contains two important rules:

Rule 1:  The customer is always right; and

Rule 2:  If the customer is ever wrong, reread Rule 1.

According to the Stew Leonard’s website:

The success of this family-owned business and their legion of loyal shoppers is largely due to their passionate approach to customer service: “Rule #1 — The Customer is Always Right”; Rule #2 - If the Customer is Ever Wrong, Re-Read Rule #1.” This principle is so essential to the foundation of the company that it is etched in a three-ton granite rock at each store’s entrance. In order to create happy customers, Stew Leonard’s is also recognized for their management philosophy: “Take good care of your people and they in turn will take good care of your customers.” It is this philosophy that has helped earn Stew Leonard’s ranking on FORTUNE Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For in America” list for the past four consecutive years.

While these rules do set an important precedent (customers must feel that they are valued and prized, otherwise why should they deal with you?), Godin would add a third rule:

… What if the customer is an amnesiac, a jerk, a difficult blowhard badmouther? What if the customer is the sort that wears his LL Bean khakis for a year and then sends them back?

In our ultracompetitive markets, how can you possibly have a chance in the face of enormous consumer power?

The answer might surprise you. It’s the unwritten rule 3 on Stew Leonard’s famous granite rock:

If the customer is wrong, they’re not your customer any more.

In other words, if it’s not worth making the customer right, fire her.

Successful organizations (and I include churches and political parties on the list) fire the 1% of their constituents that cause 95% of the pain.

Fire them?

Fire them. Politely decline to do business with them. Refer them to your arch competitors. Take them off the mailing list. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, don’t be rude, just move on.

I assisted a former client with an issue recently.  A company listed on his site and my client removed their listing after he found certain images on their site to be objectionable.  He informed them that he would be terminating their (free) listing because their site did not meet his standard for his own business.  Needless to say the company objected.  I defended my client’s position, not because he was paying me (in fact he still hasn’t paid me) but because I believe that you should be able to choose who you do business with.  If pleasing one of your customers means you have to do things that run contrary to your business’s philosophy and perhaps even compromises your integrity then perhaps you shouldn’t be doing business with that customer.

As one of the commentators on Godin’s blog puts it, you have the power to refuse service.

Technorati Tags: customer is always right, customer service, seth godin, stew leonard’s

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It seems our provincial premiers are hardly the humble curators of our provinces that we would expect them to be.  All that power goes straight to their heads very easily, sometimes to alarming degrees.  Clive Simpkins reported on an incident involving the prince … I mean, premier, of the Limpopo province, Sello Moloto, and a national minister:

A report in the Citizen of 19th April 2006 illustrates a distasteful example which may point to a deeper malaise. Limpopo premier Sello Moloto clearly believes that if he takes a leaf out of the diary of Thabo Mbeki, he might also one day rise to significant heights in SA politics. The Prez was notorious in his first term, for arriving late at events. To the extent that no less an eminence grise than Nelson Mandela upbraided him publicly for his tardiness on more than one occasion.

The issue with Moloto concerns national minister of Correctional  Services, Ngconde Balfour’s recent visit to a Polokwane prison. To cut a long story short, Moloto has developed a reputation for being up to two hours late for functions and engagements. He kept Balfour waiting for so long that the latter had to re-schedule other appointments to keep his diary on track.

The disingenuous comment from Moloto’s spokesperson, one Lucky Nchabaleng, was that if Balfour is visiting Moloto’s province, Moloto ‘takes precedence’ (in political protocol hierarchy/status terms). Eish! His piece de resistance: ‘The premier may be late if he wants to, it is his province.’ It is? I thought he was a public servant reporting ultimately to we tax payers who pay his inflated salary? Would he also claim ‘precedence’ over President Mbeki one wonders? Mind you, if they were both late, their meeting would be quite well co-ordinated! More seriously this behaviour smacks of arrogance, insensitivity or disrespect. You choose. Whichever, it says clearly, ‘You don’t matter.’

Not only should our elected officials make better use of their time addressing the issues that plague our growing nation, there should be no place for such egotistical behaviour.  The fact that Moloto was elected to the post of premier should humble him.  He should start and end his day very much aware of his responsibilities to the people he serves.  Instead we see rampant politicking, manoeuvring and posturing as officials like Moloto get far too caught up in their own self-importance.

I agree with Simpkins when he says that this “the sort of ego-driven behaviour that minister of provincial and local government Sydney Mufamadi or President Mbeki should rein in – immediately.”

Technorati Tags: limpopo, premier, abuse of power, sello moloto

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