Category: Customer Contact

Open Letter to the NJ Department of Labor: Division of Unemployment

***Back to Voice of the Customer later this week – my job for the past couple of weeks has been trying to get my unemployment payments sorted.***

I allude to this below, but want to put it here so that it is very clear: this is not AT ALL about the people doing the frontline work to get claims processed and payments certified and directed where they need to go. As far as I can tell, all of those people are doing everything they can to make this as painless as possible.

Hi, Division of Unemployment [I like to keep things friendly and casual if I can] – I’ve been trying for the past few weeks to navigate the Kafkaesque process of getting the money due me. And based on your Twitter feed and the posts on Reddit (look for [New Jersey] in the post subject) , I am far from alone. But this is not about that.

I get that the system is completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of claims. I understand that things might take longer to process than they normally would. I am not surprised  when the system crashes on occasion. I think that responding to incoming emails with a potentially useful form reply is actually a great idea – those replies are well-crafted and contain lots of good information. BUT.

Those prefab emails, while they will be useful to lots of people, don’t contain the answers to everyone’s questions. To send those emails from an address that doesn’t accept follow-up questions is so incredibly frustrating and rude. To add insult to injury, the particular issue I am experiencing* is not listed anywhere in any of the FAQs or instructions on the NJ DOL website. But every time I send an email, I get another useless-to-me autoresponse, with no way to actually connect with a human who might be able to help me.

I’ve also tried to call [pause for laughter], and have been unable to get through. This is not unexpected, and I’m not upset that I’m among the many, many people who cannot get through. Really and truly, I do understand the magnitude of the situation and the limited resources of the DOL. What does upset me is that, after I listen to the unnecessarily lengthy recorded message recommending that I file my claim online (I did), assuring me that the DOL is doing everything they can to support unemployed workers, and so on and so forth, I am transferred to a message that says – no matter what time I call during your business hours – “Welcome to the Reemployment Call Center. Due to the high volume of calls waiting, we cannot take your call at this time. If you need to speak with an agent please call back on the next business day.” Are you kidding me with this???

First, what I think you mean to do is thank me for calling, not welcome me to you hanging up on me. I know it’s a little thing, but honestly, it just rubs me the wrong way, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to be irritating people more than you have to right now. Second, and more important, how is it possible that between 7:39 and 7:40, which is when the message changes from “we’re closed” to “call back tomorrow”, that you have received so many phone calls that you know for sure no one will be available to talk to anyone else until tomorrow? Are you making people hold all day? Because that is not something I’ve seen commented on and I’m pretty sure it would have been, given how distraught people are from not being able to get answers from your department. Is there no hold queue at all? If that’s the case, then people should be trying to call throughout the day, not pushed off to the next day. I understand that you may be trying to control volume that way, but come on. Don’t make spurious claims that no one will be available for a full 24 hours when you and I both know that’s not true.

Listen, I’m not expecting miracles here. It would be really great if I could get paid the amount you’ve told me you’re going to pay me. It would be acceptable if you would just tell me why it’s not happening yet. It would even be understandable if the answer is “we don’t know what’s causing this, but we’re working through claims with this issue, please be patient.” What is unacceptable is that this is a known issue that remains unaddressed in any form on your website, and that those of us experiencing this issue have no way to actually contact a real person to find out what is happening. There are other large blocks of claimants with different known issues that are encountering similar frustration, too.

The system that you have set up to deal with this crisis is isolating, uninformative, and discourteous. You are doing not only claimants a huge disservice, but also your employees, who by all accounts are working very hard and moving things along as quickly as they can. I urge you to take a look at the systems you have in place, and work to make them as user-friendly as possible. Here are some suggestions:

  • When you see hundreds or thousands of people asking about the same issue, add that issue to your FAQ, even if you don’t have a definitive answer. Don’t just pretend it’s not happening.
  • I read that one of the stumbling blocks to hiring more people for processing is that claim information is sensitive and the systems are difficult to learn. That’s not unreasonable. What you can do is free up people who know how to handle those systems for more processing/fixing of claims by hiring frontline customer care workers who can answer emails, direct people to the information they need, and offer reassurances. It’s likely that there will still be a percentage of incoming emails that needs someone with access to the system, but if you set up a multi-tier support system (think tech support!) you’ll relieve some of the pressure on  your top tier people while providing better service to claimants.
  • When a claim or certification triggers a message that indicates the claimant needs to speak with a person (mine says, “If you do not know why your claim is not payable, please call your nearest Reemployment Call Center”), instead of throwing them into the pool and making them try get through to you against astronomical odds), let them schedule a call or at the very least, schedule one for them and let them know when to expect the phone to ring.
  • Better yet, open up a live chat system, just for the people getting that messaging from the system. If a chat takes more than a few minutes, or the issue is one that can’t be easily handled and/or explained, that’s when you refer it to your top tier claims people. Ideally, by scheduling a call or forwarding the chat transcript to the upper support tier for an email followup, not by telling them they need to call in via the overwhelmed phone lines.
  • Finally, fix your language. Don’t welcome people in the same breath you tell them you’re unavailable. Don’t tell the governor that all of the people not getting paid yet are the self-employed folks waiting for PUA – something that is patently untrue. Either answer everyone on Twitter, or ignore everyone – don’t pick and choose based on the positivity of the comment.

Thanks for reading, and considering how you can best serve the people of New Jersey. Please feel welcome to reach out if there is anything I can do to help you out with providing great customer care to your claimants.

*The issue I’m experiencing is that my claim has been approved and I have been assigned a weekly benefit amount, but every week when I certify I receive a message that my “claim is not payable at this time.” I have no appointments or interviews outstanding, nor have I been contacted about adjudication. Hundreds of other people seem to be experiencing the same issue. It’s pretty clearly systemic, which is not unreasonable, but it’s not being addressed anywhere, which is most definitely unreasonable.

If you made it this far, you deserve a cat gif. Looks like this one is hoping to get a live person on the phone at NJ DoL.

Stop, Collaborate, and Listen

When your company launches a new promotion or marketing campaign, how involved is your customer care team? What about when they make changes to the UI or product features? It seems to be a very cultural thing…at some companies, someone from customer care is involved in all marketing/user/product initiatives from the get-go, while at others it’s the customers themselves who end up telling the CSRs that a discount is being offered or a product has been changed, and of course there are many companies that are somewhere on the spectrum between those two extremes. I’ll bet you can guess where I stand.

At a previous job, we had a sign on the customer care department door that said, “Remember, if it touches the customer, it touches us (but not in a creepy way).” It was our lighthearted way of reminding the tech and marketing teams that not only did we have valuable information to share with them about the customers, but that we needed to know what our customers would be experiencing in order to provide them with the best possible service.

Sharing is caring.

I have also worked at companies where everything is done very secretively, so when customers would contact us about a promotion that wasn’t working or a feature they couldn’t find or get to work properly two things would happen. First, we would sound like idiots, denying that we were running that promotion or had that feature. Then, provided with evidence from the customer (or, occasionally, being overheard by a member of the team who implemented the campaign or change), we would have to hunt down the details, sometimes learning new product features or layouts on the fly so we could teach them to customers.

Which do you think resulted in happier customers and happier CSRs? To provide the best possible customer care, someone from your customer care team should be involved in processes and planning meetings from the beginning. We can pinpoint where customers are going to experience pain, and suggest ways to minimize those pain points. Even when there’s no way around a certain amount of customer angst, having your customer care team involved from the beginning will ensure that they are able to guide the customer through the issues that arise as smoothly as possible.

Sorry if I earwormed you with that title…here’s the video so you can sing along to the whole song:

You’re welcome/I’m sorry.

Soylent Green May Be People but Corporations Aren’t

Not many things feel less sincere than an apology from a corporation. It’s true in PR, and it’s true in customer care. It can be tempting to hide behind the safety of your company with a lot of “we” language — placing the blame on the impersonal behemoth. It’s especially tempting in customer care because whatever has gone wrong for the customer probably is not your fault, and may not even be in your control to fix. But, part of making that connection with the customer is apologizing to and sympathizing with them.

This doesn’t mean you should only ever use “I” instead of “we” in your communications to customers. In fact, there are a lot of times when you’ll be speaking as the company, and that’s totally fine. The key is to pinpoint those moments when you can build a personal connection with the customer. It seems like a little thing, but it can have a huge effect on how a customer perceives their treatment.

For example, take a look at these two delayed shipping emails:

Email 1: Unfortunately, we will be unable to ship your order until next week due to inclement weather in our area. We anticipate shipping your order by Wednesday, January 17th. You will receive an email with tracking information when your order has shipped. Please accept our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.

Pretty cold, right? And why can’t this big “we” ship my stuff out on time, anyhow? Amazon always ships my stuff the day I order it!

Email 2: I’m so sorry! We’re having a bit of weather here and as a result our shipping schedule has gotten backed up, but we should be back on track early next week. I took a look at your order and it should be going out Wednesday (January 17th). We’ll send you an email with tracking information when it ships. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s anything else I can help you with, and again, I am so sorry for the delay!

It’s still the corporate “we” who has made the decision to shut down shipping, and who will be sending the package and tracking info…but now I have a buddy there who is looking out for me, who actually feels bad that I’m not getting my package on time. I mean, I totally understand that things happen. We’re all only human, right?

Putting a human face on when a screw up or delay happens not only helps the customer feel like someone at the company is looking out for them, but also reminds them that the company is made up of people just like them, who have their back and will do their best to make their customers happy.

 

Be a Bridge, Not a Wall

Contacting a company requires effort. Your customer has to find the company’s contact information, figure out what they want to ask, make the time to email or call. So even customers who are just asking for additional information have already experienced some pain points. Now they’ve reached you. Are you there to help them, or to hinder them?

When I first started in customer care, customer service was often touted as “the first line of defense.” Defense? You’re trying to protect yourself from…customers? That should be the opposite of what you want to do. You want to build relationships with your customers, you want them to join the fold and go forth and spread the word about not only what an amazing product you have but about what an awesome company you are to deal with.

Your customer care department should serve as the bridge that leads your customers in, not the wall that keeps them out.

Your customer care department should serve as the bridge that leads your customers in, not the wall that keeps them out. This doesn’t mean “the customer is always right” (a fallacy I’ll talk about in a separate post). It means that your reps need to make your customers feel as if they have an advocate within the company (and your reps should actually be that advocate).

 

It is important to remember, too, that bridges work both ways. If there is information your company needs to make sure customers have, your customer care team should know about it so they can keep customers informed. Sometimes, that will be a policy or technological limitation that will make the customer unhappy. That’s okay. If your reps have built that advocacy relationship with the customer, they will still feel like they are part of the company’s team, and know that you are all working together to make your product or service as great as it can be.

The Case for Dropping the Phone

Not all that long ago, if you had a question about or problem with a product the norm was to call the company. Even when online commerce became common, most companies still provided a phone number in addition to an email address as a way to quickly get in touch. But Amazon, from the very beginning, made it very difficult to find their phone number. They offered extensive FAQs and it was pretty easy to find their email or use their contact forms, but it was very, very difficult to talk to person on the phone.

This was an absolute genius move on their part. Phone calls take exponentially longer to resolve than emails, especially those related to predictable problems. If you can predict — as Amazon could, when they were just in the business of selling books online — the majority of the issues your customers will encounter, you can have systems in place to handle those issues quickly and efficiently.

For example, let’s say I ordered a book from Amazon and it arrived with a torn cover. If I called, there would be pleasantries to dispense with, and then the CSR would have to find my order, and then I would have to describe the damage (which might take awhile, depending on how wordy and/or upset I was), and then the CSR would have to tell me what next steps were, and then I might want to argue, or I might have missed something and need them to explain again, and so on. We close up with more pleasantries and perhaps some small talk about the weather if I’m feeling chatty that day, and that simple return has now taken at least 10 minutes, maybe closer to 20.

That same exchange, conducted over email, would take half that time. Less, once you’ve got a handle on the issue and a procedure in place to handle it. Plus, any promises made by the CSR or requests made by the customer are in writing and easily accessible by all parties. Although there may be some initial frustration to your customers as they are still in the mindset of “talking to a person,” you will be able to quickly demonstrate through speedy resolution that there is no need for a phone call.

The key is that your responses to customer queries do need to be speedy and, even more importantly, accurate. Your CSRs absolutely must read and parse what your customers have written. They must know the questions to ask to tease the information they need out of your customers quickly and efficiently. With the right CSRs and the right procedures in place, you will save both your company and your customers time and money by making email your primary communication tool. Everybody wins!

Small Changes, Big Results

I read an interesting article the other day on the importance of being customer-centric as an organization. The article makes several strong points, especially emphasizing that if you are going to be customer-centric as an organization, as you should strive to be, you absolutely must have the buy-in of senior management. If you don’t, it’s unlikely that you will be successful in creating, much less sustaining, a customer-centric culture.

If you have senior management’s blessing, great! Go forth, be customer-centric, and reap the rewards! But what if you don’t? What if you suspect that you are going to have to drag your organization kicking and screaming into this new way of thinking? Should you just give up entirely on being customer-centric? Of course not!

You can start with some small changes in how you provide customer care. It’s easy for CSRs in a company-centric culture to be apathetic or even to position themselves in opposition to customers. Remind your CSRs that your department’s goal is happy customers. Their job is to be on the customer’s side, to make the customer feel that they have a voice with the company. That doesn’t mean giving them everything they ask for, but it does mean sympathizing with their problems.

Another thing you can do is ask to be included in planning sessions for other departments. Remember, you are the voice of the customer. Bring that voice to those meetings. That doesn’t mean you get to decide what every department does, or that you can just come in and magically everyone will buy in to your philosophies and ideals about the customer experience and becoming more customer-centric, but it does mean that when there are questions about what will serve the customer best – and there will be – you’ll be there to answer those questions.

As you attend more of these planning sessions and demonstrate that you have the best interests of the company, the department, and the customer in mind, you’ll become a trusted member of the team. Eventually, you’ll have enough of a voice to be able to steer things in a more customer-centric direction.

It can be hard to get established companies to radically change their orientation from company-centric to customer-centric. Change is scary, especially a fundamental change in underlying company philosophy. But not all change has to be big change. Small changes add up over time, and before senior management knows what hit it, your organization will be well on its way to a customer-centric culture.

 

It May Be Worth 1000 Words, but You Shouldn’t Need That Many

Want a quick tip that will ease customer frustration and increase CSR efficiency at the same time? Don’t make your customer jump through unnecessary hoops.

I recently ordered a kit that was comprised of several pieces. When I received the kit one of the pieces — a fairly distinct item — was missing. I contacted the company’s support through the interface on their site:

I received my order, but it is missing the XXXX. Could someone please send that out to me as soon as possible?

I also included my order number and mailing address, because as a customer I try to make the CSR’s job as easy as possible. This is the reply I received:

We appreciate that you have brought this issue to our attention and I am more than happy to assist you. Please send me a photo of the items you did receive from this order. 

Once I review your photo, I will be able to provide a swift solution. If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.

I’m sorry, what? Why would you ask me to do this? The missing item is not shaped like any of the other items included in the kit, so it’s unlikely that I’m overlooking it or mistaking it for something else. It might be tucked away in some packaging (it’s not — I’ve opened everything up and checked), but if that’s the case then just ask me to take a look in whatever box it’s usually found in and follow up if it’s still missing. And if I’m lying about not receiving it and trying to scam another one for free, well, I’d just leave it out of the picture, wouldn’t I?

In other words, the only purpose this photo request is serving is to delay fulfillment of my order and increase my frustration. It’s also adding extra steps for the CSR, as they have to have this back and forth with me instead of just generating an order for the missing piece to be shipped out.

Don’t get me wrong: there are times when you do need a photo. If someone claims they received a damaged package, for example, you might want a photo so that you can see where the packaging failed, or if you’re dealing with a customer who often claims damage it’s not out of line to ask them to prove the damage with a photo (though do be careful not to accuse them of anything — you’re still on their side, you just want to figure out why things so often go wrong for them). 

The bottom line is, make your process as easy for your customer (and your team!) as possible. You’ll ease frustration on both ends and create customers who talk about what great customer care you offer instead of former customers who warn people away.

Light, Fluffy, Delicious Email

Customer care email is a bit like a soufflé: delightful to both the chef(CSR) and the consumer when done well, but can easily fail if proper care and attention are lacking. As with so many things in customer care, the key elements to running your customer care emails are proper planning and the ability to be flexible with those plans.

First, let’s talk about the different kinds of emails customers may be getting from you. It is very common these days for companies to use emails for everything from promotions to newsletters, so your customers may be used to those communications from you. These are not the emails I’m talking about when I say “customer care emails” (though I will talk about them in another post). Right now I’m talking about the emails generated by your customer care department in response to direct customer inquiries.

You may be using a customer management system (CMS) like Freshdesk or Zendesk, and that’s great. Anything that lets you organize your customer touches for maximum efficiency is useful. Being able to track information about customer contacts is so important that back before these systems were readily available I created a primitive SQL based call/email tracking system for the company I was at. I’m not a programmer, but the time spent learning the code to support this system was 100% worth it. We could identify frequently asked questions, easily find pre-formatted responses to those questions, and also track customer contact numbers: overall contacts, contacts by category, contacts by type, etc. That’s all really important information to have when you’re determining how best to allocate your customer care resources.

CMSs are fantastic because that’s all already built in. Plus, they function as an email queue, with agents able to assign tickets to each other, auto-sorting features, the ability to merge tickets, bulk actions, etc. Each of the big CMSs has advantages and disadvantages, of course, but overall any of them is a good choice. Just make sure you review the feature lists to ensure the system you’re looking at will do what your business needs them to be able to do. And if you don’t see something on the features list of a system you otherwise like very much, ask! Most of these systems are highly customizable.

Even with a great CMS, the sheer volume of emails can be overwhelming, especially if there’s an issue that affects a large percentage of your customers. I have had less tech savvy CSRs suggest “turning email off for the night” as a way to staunch the flow of incoming mail, especially when there’s an issue that touches a large number of customers. It probably goes without saying, but that’s neither practical nor desirable and would only serve to increase customer frustration. However, a well-crafted auto-response can ease that frustration while setting customer expectations. I’d caution, though, that specificity is not necessarily your friend here.

If you, for instance, say that someone will be in contact within three business days and you end up being short staffed or get overwhelmed by an unforeseen issue and unable to respond within that time-frame, your customers are going to be justifiably upset. It is also likely that you will have customers who just see “three days” and don’t allow for the weekend, or who think Saturday is a business day, or any number of other misinterpretations.

It is important to respond to customers quickly, but not at the expense of a quality response. However, if you find that your department is regularly taking more than a day or two to respond to customers, you need to find the underlying cause. Do you need to staff up due to an increased customer base, or are the issues that are causing customers to contact you solvable internally? For example, are your CSRs writing custom responses to each customer when a bulk email would do? Are other departments (marketing, fulfillment, etc.) causing unnecessary confusion or making promises without being able to follow through? Address those issues! Train your CSRs, talk to other departments, do whatever you need to do to ensure that you can care for your customers in a timely and efficient manner.

 

What’s In a Name?

Years ago I had my first “Customer Service Manager” job, and while I loved the job, I hated the title. To me, “customer service” and “customer support” both carry a very strong implication that something has gone wrong and needs to be fixed. Even if that is in fact the case, it’s better to subtly steer the customer away from that impression. When a customer needs to contact me, whether it’s because something has gone wrong or they just need a little more information about something, I want them to have the feeling that I’m there to take care of them, to look after their needs. Thus, the title I prefer is “Customer Care.”

Over the years I’ve run into more twee titles, like “Happiness Expert,” “Service Ninja,” and of course we all know the Apple “Geniuses.” Those are fine, I guess, but feel to me like they’re trying too hard. “Customer Care” implies all the things we want – I’m on your side, I can handle of all your needs, I am here to take care of you – without feeling like maybe we’re all title and no follow through.

Not that these guys wouldn’t be great at customer care…

Throughout this blog, I will do my best to refer to the service we provide and the people who provide it as “customer care.” I think it is important that we think of it as customer care. We’re not just there when something goes wrong…we’re there when our customers aren’t sure how to use our products, when they want to make sure our product fits into their lives (literally or figuratively), when they want to suggest a new feature. And if we’re doing it right, we really do care about our customers.