How NOT to do customer communication

One of the simplest ways to improve your customer service is to think about how you expect to be treated by someone offering you a service.

Mrs P and I recently decided we needed a new front door so turned to the Internet

We posted a job on Rated People with an outline of the work we wanted doing and shortly after I got a phone call from a local business and organised for him to come around, measure up and give us a quote.

We accepted the quote and filled out all the paperwork to place the order. The installation time was organised for some six weeks later because of the lead time on the door we wanted and choosing a date that worked for both of us.

We were told they would be there at 8AM on the day and should be all done by noon at the very latest. This enabled Mrs P to plan her day accordingly (school runs, etc)

On the day itself 8am came and passed with no sign of the fitters.

Finally around 9.30 I got call to explain that he was in Birmingham and his supplier was closed. He wasn’t sure why but it appeared they had decided to stay closed after the bank holiday. He said that he’d make some more enquires and get back to me.

A couple of hours passed and I heard nothing more. Mrs P was still waiting in the house as he hadn’t actually cancelled yet and didn’t know if he was going to turn up in the next five minutes or not at all.

I called him back and was told he hadn’t been able to hold of anyone at the company, he didn’t have any news for me which was why hadn’t called. We ended the call with him cancelling the appointment and that he’d rearrange once he knew what was going on with the door supplier.

The rest of the week came and went with another bank holiday in between. I went back to work on the Tuesday and still hadn’t heard anything by Wednesday afternoon so gave him a call.

I was told the supplier had indeed been closed over the bank holiday and he’d only returned from a holiday the previous day which is why he hadn’t called me.

A date was arranged for the following week.

The installation date came and he did turn up with the door (albeit twenty minutes late) though in the days running up to it we had no idea how we were supposed to pay him. (cheque/bank transfer/cash!)

Have I made it obvious what irked me?

While we were very happy with the completed work it’ll be highly unlikely that I’ll reuse or recommend that person.  

The entire lack of communication was highly frustrating.

First, the door supplier – did they do a good enough job of communicating a change to their opening hours? I can’t actually answer this to be honest as it could have been the fitter who hadn’t done his “homework”. That said if he’d ordered/reserved the door surely a collection date would have been organised. If this was the case at this point the fact they were going to be closed should have been outlined.

Second was the lack of ownership of the problem. The fitter had an appointment with us at eight AM but I didn’t hear from him until an hour and half after that. The conversation on the phone was all about blaming the supplier and I never actually got an apology at this stage.

Third was the lack of updates on what was happening. I had to chase him some hours later to find out what was going on and his response was “I didn’t call as I don’t have any news”. This wasn’t very helpful when we’d arranged for someone to be at home and they were still waiting on him.

Fourth, why did I have to chase up for a new appointment? I’m not saying he had to break into his holiday just to keep me informed but he’d returned to work as normal (he was on a roof when I called him) – if I hadn’t called when would he have called me?

Finally, and it’s only a small thing but the issue around how to make a payment. The night before we made the decision we were going to give him a cheque – we didn’t actually know if this was ok but he hadn’t told us anything different. It wasn’t on any paper work we’d had nor had it been mentioned. A little think but could have been little awkward when he’d finished.

I ended up as frustrated customer, I understand that mistakes happen – nothing runs to plan all the time but this could have all been avoided by making a couple of calls.

So as I said right at the start what I’ll be taking away from this how it can have an impact on my customer service.

Is it possible to OVER communicate? Either way too much communication is surely better than no communication right?

As always thoughts and comments welcome!

TCA Conference and COMPTIA

It’s almost nine pm and I only got home about an hour ago after leaving the house at about six thirty this morning. The reason for such a long day was the TCA conference at the Walkers Stadium in Leicester

I was very kindly invited as a guest of the TCA Chief Executive, Adam Harris. As well as the conference itself this also meant I was invited to a reseller forum being run in conjunction with Comptia

This was a breakfast meeting before the main conference itself so registration was at 07:30…nice and early!

The reseller forum was a roundtable style event with lots of different business from around the UK. Some were managed service providers, some were businesses who concentrate on home users as well as some software developers

We had a set agenda and this lead to some great discussions around some of the business issues that we all face such as vendor relationships and becoming that “trusted advisor” to your clients. As it is when I go to AMITPRO it was great to hear how other people do things and see if I can use their experiences to improve my own business.

The final part of the session focussed around best practices. The idea here was that we all had a minute to suggest an idea that has either made or saved money for us. This could be in the form of using a new technology, a business process or even just a business process or policy. We would then all vote on who we thought had the best idea

It was great to hear what everyone had to say. They were all unique and I came away from the meeting with tons of notes full of ideas I can use myself.

After the forum was the actual TCA conference itself.

The conference was opened by the TCA Chairman, Robert French who then handed over to a series of presentations by the sponsors such as Samsung, Kasaya and Synaxon. Of those, one thing that was interesting was the approach Samsung are taking to try in making their external hard disks stand out from the crowd. One thing is to make the packaging unique. They have done this by making it look more like an entertainment package and including a move to watch

Terminator Salvation is one of the movies available. Others included Angels & Demons and the Michael Jackson film that was released shortly after his death with the drive itself having a custom design. They are also looking at similar opportunities for custom designs (Samsung are a Chelsea sponsor for example so they are launching a blue drive with the club badge on)

It’s great to see someone trying something different in a market that isn’t all that exciting

Next up was one of my favourite presentations of the day

It’s the first time I’ve come across Matthew Poyiadgi, who is Vice President at CompTIA. His enthusiasm really comes across and his presentation was fantastic. One of his opening lines was

“I’ve got 84 slides to get through…..

No, really!”

However, this was no death by PowerPoint and I’ll say hand on heart this was one of the most interesting and inspiring thirty minutes I’ve had the pleasure to sit through in some time.

Matthew talked about the current state, of technology, where we’re going and how as businesses we need to be thinking outside the box for marketing and brand awareness and using mediums such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging (just to start!) to reach out to customers. I’m not really doing it justice here though so if you get the chance to hear Matthew speak make sure you take it up!

After a spot of lunch and chatting with exhibitors the next session was about the impending launch of the TCA Academy

This is all about bringing together training and certifications under a single umbrella to help set standards in the UK IT industry. This is to help make companies more professional, weed our the “cowboys” and give clients (consumer or business) confidence they are choosing a quality supplier (you know anyone who is Corgi registered shouldn’t endanger your family after fixing your boiler for example!)

After this was the “reseller theatre”

People from four different IT business (including AMITPRO’s very own Richard Tubb) had a “pitch and bitch” session where they talked about challenges and triumphs they have encountered over the last year or so including having a bit of moan (see, pitch vs bitch!) over some things that can be frustrating. The format lent itself well to some audience participation and again there were some great ideas and discussion points thrown around

Next there was a presentation from one of the sponsors, Kingston Technology who were there to talk about their solid state drives. I had a chance to speak to the people on the Kingston stand and they have an interesting product line. One of the options is an SSD upgrade kit. This kit comes with a caddie (internal for desktop, external for laptops) cables and a disc that comes pre-loaded with some disk imaging software (the specific technology is Acronis) to transfer your operating system onto the new drive. Once the transfer is done your left with a regular hard disk to use as you see fit (backups anyone!?). If I were planning on buying an external hard drive I’d seriously consider looking at this as an option. I’d still get an external drive but I’d also get the performance enhancements afforded by an SSD. Kingston had two near identical laptops on their stand with different drives so they could demonstrate the performance enhancements by having “boot races” to see which system came up quickest

There were then a couple of presentations by some of the guys at Hiscox and P & A Finance who are helping provide TCA member benefits (comprehensive insurances and financial advice respectively) followed by a roundup of some of the TCA member benefits and an overview of the direction TCA are going by new Chief Executive, Adam Harris

The final two presentations were very interesting

The first was a “PR masterclass” by Dennis Publishing (well known for PC Pro, Micro Mart, Channel Pro, etc)

I didn’t get the persons name who presented this but it was very entertaining and an insight into how you can use PR, specifically leveraging trade publications to promote your business.

To end the conference there was a chat show style interview with David Atherton

David is famous for starting dabs.com and four years ago selling it to BT for a large sum of cash!

He talked about how he went from selling computers via mail order to becoming one of the leading “e-tailers” in the UK

It was a fascinating insight into how David built the business and took advantage of technology to drive his company forward. As you can imagine there were some great stories to hear and David shared his experiences with us and was very open and honest

It was seven thirty by the time I got back to my car so I’d been there over twelve hours and still had the drive home to contend with. While it was a long day I’m glad I was able to stay for the whole event as it’s been a useful day. I’ve come away with tons and tons of notes and ideas which I’ll sleep on tonight and hopefully do something with tomorrow

I’d just like to thank William Linard of Comptia as I haven’t mentioned him above. He did a great job behind the scenes and even delivered a speech of his own as part of the TCA Academy launch even though he only had five minutes notice! Thanks to everyone at TCA and COMPTIA who organised today (and the sponsors of course!)

It was also really good to catch up with some of the guys I know through the small business specialist community. While conferences are great for meeting new people I also enjoy getting together with the people that I do know to kick ideas around and generally enjoy the experience together as friends and colleagues so thanks to Richard Tubb, Chris Timm, James Harbidge and Rob Franklin (who battled through a terrible cold!)

Paypal Payments

I’ve come across Paypal on three occasions in a short space of time which raised a question I wanted opinions on

If someone offers PayPal as a payment option, who should pick up the payment charges?

The first time I got thinking about this is because AMITPRO now offers PayPal as a payment option for our subscriptions

Guy and I figured it was a quick and easy way of providing the ability for members to make credit card payments and if it encouraged just one person to pay quicker i would be worth more than the potential time and effort trying to chase payment later down the line

I then had to pay for two sets of services, both of them gave me the option to pay by cheque or PayPal

One of them swallowed the costs, one of them added the charge on top of what I was paying for

I asked the question on Twitter and got the following responses

@AndyParkes – how we see it is that the PayPal charges covers the wages of the credit control / money chaser person we don’t have to employ!

@AndyParkes depends

 

@AndyParkes if its the only method given – then the seller should.

Customer Service and Service Delivery – Get it right!

I’ve not written a post like this in a while!

I’ve had a couple of experiences over the last few days that reinforces how customer service and service are not mutually exclusive

You need to get them both right if you want your business to stand out from the rest. This sort of thing is highlighted to me when dealing with larger companies

In my last post I talked about my shiny new HTC Touch 2 Windows Phone. Well guess what, it’s broken

I was out watching my Sunday football team at the weekend (watching is all I’m doing at the moment as I need a knee operation) and I’d forgotten to charge my phone. By the time I got home the battery was dead so I hooked it up to the charger and left it

When I checked on it few hours later the phone started up and shortly after the home screen was displayed the whole thing locked up. None of the buttons worked nor did the touch screen. I couldn’t even power it off and had to either pop the battery out or press the soft reset button

I performed a hard reset (press both the volume buttons and turn it on) but it was still the same

So the following morning I called T-Mobile and braved their telephone menu system

I spoke to a customer service agent who asked what the problem was

I explained the problem, told her that I’d tried a hard reset and said that the phone was unusable

She asked if the problem occurred in specific menus on the phone or all menus. I said that I couldn’t get into ANY menus. The phone locks up before then

She said ordering a new one shouldn’t be a problem and it would arrive tomorrow. So far so good I thought but it turns out there wasn’t any stock. Service delivery fail!

I needed to know where this put me as I was now without a phone

She seemed surprised at this

“Are you not calling from the phone?”, she said

my perplexed reply was, “No. I’ve already said the phone is unusable”

“You said that the problem only occurred in certain menus”

“No. I said that I couldn’t even get into ANY menus, the phone is unusable”

Customer service fail! You really need to listen to the customer when they are describing a problem

She basically then said I had two options, wait for stock or take it my nearest service centre

I asked where the nearest centre was and she gave me the address before adding,

“If you take it there the repair could take up to 28 days”

Multiple fail! This isn’t doing anything to solve my problem. I have phone I’m paying for and can’t use. Waiting 28 days isn’t really an option I want

She then told me that she would monitor the stock and call me the following day to let me know the phone was dispatched so I’d get it the following day

That was Monday, I didn’t receive a phone call at all on Tuesday so I’m not expecting any phone to show up today.

Yet more fail! If you promise to do something for your customer, make sure you actually do it. If they hadn’t received any stock so I wouldn’t have been getting a phone today, at least keep me informed to that fact!

In contrast I had to take my car to the garage recently. It’s something I always dread as you hear lots of horror stories about people getting ripped off for work that doesn’t need doing.

However, the garage I go to have really good customer service, they did the exactly the work they said they were going to at a reasonable price and even sorted out a problem with car they probably should have charged me extra for

In their reception area they have a notice board full of letters of thanks from previous customers. Recommendations from happy customers are always a good thing to see

What’s the difference between these two companies?

Size

As a small business it’s really something that’s critical. There are tons of garages I could have taken my car to so by making me into a happy customer they get my repeat business. It’s a real differentiator

For big business it’s difficult to keep a high level of service across your whole company, there is also less competition and they all have similar problems

So now I’m off to ring T-Mobile again..that’ll be fun

We’ve Got Wheels

I’m certainly not the first person to have done this but couldn’t help post about it

We’ve had an awful lot going on here recently

I posted a couple of months ago about our latest recruit. The main plan was to get him up to speed on how we work and develop his role to help to take a lot of the day to day problems we get (You know the sort “I can’t print”, “why can’t I send this 25mb attachment?”)

This also involved going out to client sites to install PC’s and printers, memory upgrades, etc

For him to do this he needed to be mobile so we’ve invested in a van. As well as the company logos we’ve had small business specialist logos added as well

How does it look?

The pictures were taken on an iPhone so if the quality is low…blame Apple

HP ML350 G5 Resetting on Power Failure

We learnt quite a lot on the last SBS install we did recently

Normally when we’re putting in a network we try to ensure we’re only working with equipment we know and trust. Normally this isn’t a problem as we recommend certain hardware to the client they just decide which specific items they want

On this particular install there was an IT person in-house who was looking after the day-to-day running of system and was in charge of managing the new server installation project

He decided that he wouldn’t need the UPS we had quoted for as they already had one and it was “fairly new”

We also know the in-house IT manager well as we’ve worked closely with him on various other projects for other companies so we had to trust him on this one

So towards the end of the install we wanted to make sure the UPS (of a brand I’d never heard of!) behaved as expected so we performed a simulated power failure (I pulled the plug out!)

Normally we’d expect the server to stay on and the software to shut the server down safely when needed

This isn’t what happened

The server stayed on for about two seconds and then restarted. Not good

Worried we had too much load on the UPS we took everything else off and tried again with just the server connected. Same thing and we also noticed a weird clicking noise coming from the back of the rack

As this was a UPS we didn’t trust we decided it best to replace it. The in-house IT guy disappeared and returned with a price for an APC UPS from one of his other suppliers at price he was happy with

Though we’d have preferred him to use the model of UPS we usually recommend the “customer is always right” (and he had budget he wanted to work to) so he ordered the UPS (APC Part number – SC1500I)

It arrived the next day and we tried again. Exactly the same problem!

We couldn’t possibly have two faulty UPS’s could we? So we thought it must be the power supply. What else could it be? We’d also determined the weird clicking noise (like a relay constant switching) was coming from the power supply so this seemed to make sense

After getting the power supply changed we tried again and had exactly the same issue

This was getting frustrating so went back to the UPS. We were getting some odd communication issues between the UPS and the server so maybe we were really unlucky and have been sent a faulty UPS so we sent that back and asked for replacement

The UPS arrived and once again we had the same issue

We had some dealings with HP support and they were pushing us in the direction of UPS (though at the time we felt like they were doing this as it wasn’t a HP component and they weren’t exactly confident about it)

Now we’ve got other ML350 G5 servers with APC UPS’s that are working just fine so we pulled one of our UPS’s out of the office so we knew we were working with equipment we knew and trusted

The problem went away!

After a bit more digging we think we’ve found out why

When using APC we usually use this part code : SUA1500I (the part number varies slightly depending on the load we’re expecting and if we need it rack mounted but it’s still the SMART UPS range)

The APC website allows you to do comparison between products which illustrates what we think is the problem

Look at the last entry

The UPS we normally use has a true sine wave output, the other UPS doesn’t (I’m guessing the first UPS didn’t either – it was so obscure I struggled to find out anything about it)

This website gives a decent explanation of the difference between the two waveform types

I’ve since been back with a brand new UPS (of the type we normally use) and there are no power issues. I did full calibration via the APC software and the system stayed on battery for about twenty minutes and a manual test (pulling the plug out!) gave similar results

So what did we learn?

Be very wary of components you don’t know. This is a great example of why we work with a specific group of products as it makes support easier and we don’t have to stayed trained on several different products that do the same thing (that doesn’t mean we stay fixed on specific items and push clients into products they don’t need or not give them any choice, for example, we work with Leibert UPS’s too).

We possibly should have brought in a trusted component earlier. We ended up chasing after the server power supply when this had nothing to do with the problem

Also be careful of how you "manage" the in-house IT guy. While we knew this particular person very well I think we could have been a little more insistent to try a product we knew and trusted once we’d decided the original UPS was to be replaced

The best way to deal with any mistake or set back is to learn from it and i think we certainly have here

Employee Hiring

I still find it weird how blog posts seem to turn up just when they are relevant to me. It happens on a regular basis. I’ll be thinking about a change i want to make in the business and within days someone has posted about. It’s like the blog-o-sphere force knows what I’m thinking!

So while the post Vlad made about hiring strategies is now a couple of weeks old I’ve only just got around to blogging about it because I’ve been preparing for our new starter!

The business has got to the level where we needed someone else. We have enough work to keep us going at the current level but the business wont grow in it’s current state and if we started taking on any more work it wouldn’t be fair on the customers we do have as we’d be too stretched and that’s not the sort of business I’m interested in on both of those areas. We also need to free up more time to get in front of new prospects, develop new services and execute the “master plan”

So we had to make the decision about what kind of person to get.

We eventually decided we needed some to help ease the day to day problems. Someone to help the end users when they need a print spooler restarting, explain how to login to Outlook Web Access and find out why there is nothing on the screen when the power cable has been unplugged.

After we’d done the interviews there was a wide range of skill sets and experience to choose from.

The person who seemed to stick out was the guy who was confident and articulate, smartly dressed and had made the effort to put the effort into the tiny details. Also he’s keen and eager and was actually willing to make a lot of sacrifices to come and work for us (I wont detail those here though as it’s his personal business)

But the initial problem was his lack of experience. He was very open about the fact he wanted to “break into IT” but was in the classic catch 22 situation

Can’t get job without the experience, can’t get the experience without a job

Every time we reviewed it again we came back to the same conclusion

“If he had a bit more experience he’d be perfect”

We knew straight away he’d fit in with us and wouldn’t have a problem dealing with our clients

It finally dawned on us that we needed to get the right person for the company not the right person for the role

So we offered him the job.

If I’m being honest if we were looking to fill the role he would have been bottom of the list

But he could get his experience for us. We know he’s a perfect fit for our company and if you want to learn about the IT industry I think the SMB area is a pretty good place to start! He’s been with us for a week and a half and I can see the difference already and I’m looking forward to the next six months

I’ve mentioned the blog to him a couple of times but not sure if he’s reading

But if you are,

Welcome to the business…we hope you enjoy the ride!

Support Experiences

Lots of people talk about bad support experiences so i wanted to post about two experiences i had last week

One of our clients has four servers, two HPs and two “other brand” servers (names concealed to protect the guilty!). The HPs are the newest that we installed and the others we inherited when we took on the contract

If we have any hardware issues we deal with HP directly. If there are issues with the other servers we have a contract in place with another company (who also happen to be a distributor of these servers) as we can’t get support directly from the vendor (as far as i am aware!)  

Late on wednesday night i got an email from one of the HPs letting me know it was having a problem with one of the disks. That particular disk is part of a RAID 5 array so i knew there was no “immediate” emergency but had to deal with it pretty quickly

So i went to the office on Thursday morning and logged a call with the HP support desk just before 9 am. At the same time i spotted a problem with one of the “other” servers so logged a call for that as well. I had a meeting scheduled to see the client anyway so left shortly after for a 10.30 meeting.

I got a call back from HP on-route to let me know that a new hard disk would be on site by 11am and “would i like an engineer as well?”

I declined an engineer as it was something i was happy to do since i was going to be there

At 10.50 I got a call to say there had be a slight delay and the drive would be there by 11.30 and “we are really really sorry for the delay”

The drive arrived at 11.20 so it promptly went into the server so it could start rebuilding on the new drive.

By about 13:30-14:00-ish i checked the status and it had finished the re-build and was working happily….it was then i realised that no-one had been in touch about the other server

When i did check the status i was told “we’re trying to source the part”

So in short.

HP called me back to let me know what was happening, shipped a drive immediately, called to apologise profusely for it being twenty minutes late and the whole thing had rebuilt by lunch time……in this time i hadn’t even had a call back to give me a status update from the “other” support company,

I’m intentially not mentioning the guiltly parties here as i’d like to give some kudos to HP for a job well done!

Don’t let them get you down

Today i had the stuffing knocked out of me

A couple of months ago someone we used to work with approached us about coming to work for us. It coincidiced well with where were are as a company. We have just enough customers to keep us busy but if we wanted to grow (of course!) then knew we’d need people so we could start delegating some of the day-to-day responsibilities and free up time for finding new customers, doing more with existing customers, marketing, process improvement and all those sorts of things to help you become bigger and better

We sorted out all the formalities and our new staff member has been working his notice period. We arranged everything he’d need to hit the ground running (new pc/laptop, equipment, software, phones, business cards, etc) and Monday 23rd was to be the big day and we had started making plans around this extra resource. I was personally very excited as it marked the next stage in our evolution as a company.

Today we got a phone call to say his current employer had offered him more money and agreed to change his job role so wouldn’t be coming to us.

I didn’t answer the phone but from the half of the conversation i could hear i could tell straight away. It was a real kick in the teeth.

It stuffs up lots of the things we had planned and feels like the last six weeks have been a waste. From an monetry point of view we will lose what we paid to get business cards printed and a mobile phone contract will be going to waste for a while. The rest will just be waiting for whoever we find instead. In the grand scheme of things thats not an awful lot of cash.

So what have we learnt?

From the cynical point of view, don’t mix friends with business. Harsh? Maybe? I was more gutted as i knew and trusted this person and maybe i’d have brushed it off easier if it had been some stranger

We are going to take the positives from this experience and learn from it. We’ll be looking to get someone else straight away and not feel sorry for ourselves. We wont take anything for granted until the person is standing in the office for their first day of work

Maybe things happen for a reason. Hopefully this will motivate us even more to be as successful as we can be and we’ll look back on the day we were let down as a turning point

SMB Consulting Best Practices

I wasn’t going to post about this until i’d finished reading but i’m enjoying it so much i couldn’t wait

SMB Consulting Best Practices Harry Brelsford

Well worth picking up. I placed the order and it actually arrived from the US before a book i’d ordered from Amazon UK on the same day

The start of the book is aimed at would be (or just starting out) SMB Consultants who want to know all about organising and running a successful (thats the important bit!) small business consultancy

It covers areas such actually deciding if your up to it, writing a business plan, marketing, sales, building client relationships, financial management, picking a niche, a nice big section on SBS 2003 and plenty of other resources that will be of use regardless of who long you have been in business

The reason i picked this up was that after we moved offices i decided we could use the opportunity to revamp some of our processes, procedures, strategies, etc as they are not quite as efficient as i’d like. I was looking for some resources that would give me a fresh perspective but couldn’t find anything that grabbed my attention but i’m sure was glad i found this.

I know Vlad is a big fan of The Guide to a Successful Managed Services Practice so i think that is next on my purchase list

 Anyone else got any business books/blogs/websites etc that are worth checking out?