Category: Process

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.

Building Systems

A few weeks ago, someone asked me how I design customer care systems from the bottom up, and it really got me thinking. Most of the time, even when I’m coming in on the ground floor, someone somewhere has some idea that customers require specific assistance. This means that it’s pretty easy to identify the high level pain points, and (hopefully), there will be a pretty good customer profile available, too.

^^ Pain point.

Those two things are where I start: I find out where the customers hurt, and by looking at who the customers are, figure out the best way to ease that pain. Sounds easy, right? Here’s the thing: the more problems you solve, the more you will find. This isn’t a bad thing. This is where you get to refine the experience you’re offering your customers.

Ideally, designing customer care processes will follow a linear progression:

  1. Identify the pain point
  2. Create a short-term fix that works for your particular customer
  3. Work with other departments to actually solve the problem

For example, let’s say people are having trouble signing in to your web site. That’s your pain point. Your short term fix might be writing a detailed step-by-step guide that will walk your customer through the process, especially if your customer isn’t very familiar with create logins for websites. But that’s not a great long-term fix — that hasn’t solved the problem, just slapped a band-aid on it.

Your next step is to work with the UI people and create a sign in process that doesn’t cause the customer pain. Solving the problem is your end game — customer care is all about making sure the customer is cared for throughout the company. Remember, you are the customer’s voice within the company.

Relieving pain points may take several iterations, and some things you try might not make the process better (or might even make it worse!). Don’t be afraid to make the changes you need to make to provide great customer care. And don’t get frustrated when new pain points rear their heads. It is completely normal — expected, even — that as you solve the bigger problems, you’ll start seeing the smaller problems.

Going back to our example above, let’s say you’ve solved the sign-in problem. Now, suddenly, you’re inundated with complaints from customers that they’re having trouble finding a particular type of product or piece of information on your site. You haven’t changed the site…why weren’t you hearing about this before?

Well, first, you probably were, you just didn’t notice it because this complaint was drowned out by the people who couldn’t get signed in. But also, now you’ve got a bunch more people who are signed in and eager to use your site. So now, this is the problem you need to solve.

This cycle will continue to happen — don’t panic! The more your refine your systems, the easier and faster steps 2 and 3 will be to implement. Plus, barring a huge relaunch or something like that, the problems will get smaller and smaller. Even if/when you have a relaunch or introduce a new process to your customers, now that you’ve developed your systems, it will be relatively painless to handle the problem solving.

Please do not build THIS system.

What will your system look like? I can’t answer that…it’s going to be tailored to the needs of your customer and your company. The systems I built for dealing with parents purchasing tutoring services for their kids are vastly different from the ones I’ve built for dealing with retail customers. And even within those systems, there are different components for handling bargain shoppers vs. those who require white-glove service. I deal with issues that require Marketing to make changes differently from those that require tech changes.

You should always be refining these systems to make them as efficient and tailored as possible. Don’t get so attached to your systems that you stop making them better. These are tools for different jobs. If you’re tempted to try to use the same system for everything, try to remember the old chestnut about everything looking like a nail when all you have is a hammer. You should have an entire tool chest at your disposal if you want to provide really great customer care.

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.