Insights and musings about customer service and managing a SaaS software company.
Archive for the ‘Customer Service’ Category
May 16, 2012 by Yuval Brisker
Martin Lewis wants to make retail and service organizations responsible for customer wait times. He’s a consumer advocate in the U.K., and he’s launching a campaign called Stand and Deliver.
It’s great that people are standing up and demanding a real improvement in customer service. Mr. Lewis proposes giving fines or paying bonuses according to service providers’ performance. From my point of view – it’s a short term solution to a much deeper-seated challenge to delivering timely, quality service.
TOA has done a lot of research into what people care about regarding a service that’s being delivered, and I can say that people are not really interested in getting a bonus or receiving compensation when service is not delivered in a timely manner, because for most people, what it really comes down to is respect – respect for commitments made and respect for the value of someone’s time. If it seems simple – it is. It’s why when we go to our customers and prospects, we make sure that they know it’s not just about maximizing and optimizing their field force ability to do work on any given day or how many truck rolls they can eliminate – it’s about time and the customer experience.
There will always be an element of holding businesses accountable for the service they provide to customers. But the more that service organizations can open up to their customers and just say, company to person, person to person, “this is when your appointment will start and end” without making them play a frustrating waiting game, that’s where the trust and long-term value based relationship is built.
March 29, 2012 by Yuval Brisker
Today, TOA and DISH are announcing the successful completion of TOA’s ETAdirect deployment at DISH Network. DISH is the 3rd largest nationwide Pay TV provider in the US and one of the largest companies of its kind on the planet.
This is a milestone in an exciting and fulfilling phase in our partnership with a great company. This partnership has yielded a landmark deployment of ETAdirect that has many firsts and many records that I am extremely proud of, including:
The largest deployment of a natively Cloud-based Mobile Workforce Management SaaS solution in the world! TOA’s solution was deployed to well over 16,000 users across the US, from Maine to San Diego; from Alaska and Hawaii to Puerto Rico. No other company in our space has ever managed to pull off such an amazing feat or can even get close to handling that kind of scale of a Cloud deployment. DISH bet on the Cloud, on SaaS, and has not bought any licensed software since 2008 and has not looked back. That’s vision! But their bet on TOA has brought about the largest deployment of SaaS that they (or almost anyone) has done yet in an extremely complex and multifaceted environment and a fast-paced business. We changed the engines while the plane was in flight, so to speak, we kept it all afloat while the passenger had their drinks on the deck and didn’t feel a thing…and we did this together without skipping a beat… what a great joint achievement it is!!
The largest deployment of a robust HTML5-based Mobility App - and the largest single Android-based tablet deployment to a mission critical mobile workforce. With the support and encouragement of our great DISH partners, TOA’s Technology Group headed by our CTO, Irad Carmi, has been pushing the envelope on HTML5 to the absolute limit (and beyond). The things that our HTML5 development team has managed to get the old browser to do are just plain amazing and rank as true world-class innovation…a special feat is the complete and robust offline functionality that lets the ETAdirect Mobility App sustain full functionality and all the related data while it’s offline and not connected to the Internet…including if the device crashes or runs out of battery – it comes back fully loaded with functionality and data – when it’s out of coverage. A true miracle!
A lightning-fast deployment – So fast, it smokes anything our competition (or many an enterprise software vendor) has ever achieved at this scale – a record 11 months and 24 days from kick-off to completion of deployment. This included a complex integration with many DISH back-end systems.
Real-time appointment booking - In an industry first, DISH customer service agents using DISH CRM systems have extended visibility into the field when they book appointments with customers. Booking is now done in direct relation to real capacity and technician availability which is based on real historical usage and performance patterns and our patented predictive analytics, rather than estimations and guess work. This means that when time commitments are made to a customer at booking – the promise will be kept 100 percent of the time.
One view of the customer operations - DISH now has something no nationwide provider of service has – One View of their customer operations no matter who is delivering the service and where they are, with a focus on quality of service and the best customer experience in the U.S. DISH’s goal was to find a way to bring all the many different stakeholders, service delivery partners and the various parts of the Dish Network Services together to guarantee a unified operation and a consistent customer experience. An operation the size of DISH can only do that with automation and an intelligent web-based communications hub and that’s the role that ETAdirect is playing. Dish Network Services is leveraging ETAdirect Manage and ETAdirect Mobility to its fullest.
Keeping customers in the loop - DISH’s stated aim is to be the best provider of customer service in America. A central pillar of that goal is to provide customers with total transparency and choice with on-going, relevant and continuously available information about the status of their appointment from the moment an appointment is booked up to the moment service is delivered to their home. DISH and TOA’s joint philosophy – that an informed customer will always be a more satisfied customer – is supported by a visionary approach to using state-of-the-art technology which employs ETAdirect’s predictive software and proactive customer communications (PCC) and every available means of communication and information to bring customers into the loop of the appointment event throughout.
Partnership - It’s been (and is) a pleasure and great privilege to work with a world-class customer like DISH and call them, and be called, a partner. An organization that works together at the highest levels and stays focused on what’s important, DISH Network is a intense place of achievement, innovation and reach. It has great people at all levels pushing the envelope without fear in a smart and strategic way. That is the great kind of customer/partner one needs to have to make a big leap forward. TOA’s solution and people, coupled with the vision and panache of the DISH Team, has been an unbeatable combination.
DISH’s amazing team is headed by Erik Carlson, EVP Ops and Mike McClaskey, CIO, two of the most visionary, brilliant and ambitious leaders that I (and TOA) have ever had the honor of working with. They have led their team with a call to work with TOA as true partners and everyone followed in their wake. Leadership is not just a word here, and I saw how that kind of leadership can set the tone for incredible large-scale business transformation. In Mike and Erik, DISH has two great leaders who lead with their mind and a sharp eye and are the kind of people who just make things happen. To have true partners who have a clear vision of what they want, a vision you share, partners who are willing to go the distance, to take the kind of risks that it takes to move the world ahead – that’s a business essential. Leadership needs to be totally and outspokenly committed, and with DISH, we had it all.
To the people who have worked with us on the TOA side at every level and on the DISH side at every level – thanks for all the great and hard work!
Because at the end of the day this is all about people: the people we serve, the people we work for and work with, the people we partner with. And in this case, partnership was, and continues to be, the key to success.
That’s my biggest takeaway from this adventure – that an undertaking of this scale, scope and ambition cannot truly succeed without real synchronicity, and the dedication and commitment of everyone involved to foster hard work and a frank and open exchange of ideas. This is how great things, great business is done and we had that here aplenty – at all levels.
When Irad and I founded this company we had a dream of partnering with big companies in a broad range of industries to really innovate and transform their mobile business and their customer experience – but even more than that, to transform the relationship and the reputation that enterprise software vendors had with enterprise customers. Having found a customer like DISH here and built the kind of partnership that we have and seen the results, the fruits of that partnership ripen - I feel that one significant part of our dream has come true.
March 5, 2012 by Yuval Brisker
It seems as if proactive, positive, great customer service is on everyone’s mind…
Why is that?
Because people just expect it in this world of hyper-connectivity and total instantaneity.
After all…we are all SO connected every minute of every day…we can check our Facebook on a plane…we can track our pizza being delivered…we get alerts when our flight is delayed…UPS tells us when our package is delivered.
People just don’t feel like there is any room for slacking off on customer service…
And if companies DO slack off…then there is only one reason: The company you bought a good or service from…just doesn’t care…doesn’t want to invest in the people, the processes, the tools and the technology to provide the very best in customer service. That’s the perception, and not only is perception reality – but also probably true.
Because if Amazon and Apple and others have taught us anything, it’s that it IS possible to provide a phenomenal customer experience without compromise and win. It’s just a question of will, of prioritization: Making a great customer experience the most important thing there is. The top priority!
Just yesterday I was at an Apple store in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue. There were a million people in the store – I am not exaggerating. I used my Apple Store app to scan my product and read reviews on my iPhone and then to purchase it using my Apple account – all without having to talk to a salesperson or to go to a check out counter.
I could have just put that product in my bag and walked out. And no one would have even KNOWN whether I paid for it or not. It was an amazing experience.
But I did stop and talk to one of those blue T-shirted salespeople and I asked her…what is the philosophy behind letting people scan their own products on the iPhone and pay for them via an Apple account and just walk out of the store without any supervision. Wasn’t Apple worried about stealing? And what did she tell me…? She said:
Apple believes that the benefits of providing the majority of honest people with a transformative customer experience far outweigh the cost of a few people shoplifting. That the company “believes in the power of the virtue” (direct quote) of most people. That those whose intent it was/is to shoplift…will shoplift anyway…so why deny a great customer experience for the rest of us?
Clearly this is the vision of great service. Apple believes that the fruits of investing in a ‘transformative customer experience’ are bountiful: More loyalty. More sales. And more efficiency: no need for all those checkout people – they are roaming the store helping people actually BUY. Using the App, of course!!!
November 4, 2011 by Yuval Brisker
Today TOA released the Annual Cost of Waiting survey.
This is a Zogby survey which determines the cost people perceive that they have to wait at home for a good or service to be delivered to their home. The most interesting aspect of this year’s survey is its focus on the personal toll in dollars, pounds, euros and reals that consumers in four countries perceive the wait for the delivery of an in-home goods or service delivery is costing them from their own pay. In these economically challenging times – this is of particular concern.
Key Insights:
We commissioned the survey in the US, UK, Germany and Brazil, of more than 1000 adults per country – On average, 58% of respondents waited for in-home deliveries or services in the past year:
- 58% = total # of respondents who completed the survey, divided by the total # of completed respondents and # of respondents who opted out of the very first question (they didn’t wait)
The report found a potential $37.7 billion economic impact of the total time spent waiting for in-home services (like utilities, retail delivery, broadband, etc.):
- $37.7 billion = US average cost of waiting (per individual – $250), multiplied by the American Civilian labor force (based on 2010 US Census data)
The annual Cost of Waiting per individual is equivalent to removing the average American from the workforce for more than two full days:
- Cost of waiting per individual is nearly $250 annually in the US – based on respondent-reported values
- The average wait time for in-home services in 2011 was nearly four and a half hours (4.5) – two hours and 30 minutes longer than expected – and took place approximately three appointments per year
The impact of social media on the customer service process and a focus on preventative and real-time solutions will also be key to service differentiation:
- Our survey found that 55% of respondents would complain, either to their friends or social networks, if their service technician was not on time.
This year’s study showed a low consumer threshold for frustration – for every customer lost, it costs businesses $330 annually (based on respondent estimates):
- Improving customer service and investing in advanced technology tools can dramatically change a customer’s perception of a business – Of the respondents surveyed, 70% stated that they would recommend a company solely on the fact that an appointment was on time.
There has been a drastic shift in opinions of good customer service, as customers are taking note of each technician’s skill level as the main determinant of good customer service.
- 81% of respondents noted that the skill of a service technician as being critical to creating a positive service experience, and their initiative to go above and beyond, was among the most important aspects that positively impact their opinion of a company.
