Customer Service - When Have You Created "Quality"

I often struggle with what the heck customer service really is. I've seen so many forms and flavors and I don't really feel that any of them left me feeling all that "serviced". Over the years I've tried many different philosophies on this and I'm starting to think I knew the answer all along.

In my early years I worked for my dad quite a bit. He owned a locksmithing business here in town and it was a great gig going through college because he would let me tailor my hours around school. Of course we had the regular dad/son fights and what-not, but overall I think it was a pretty sweet deal (for me anyway). One thing I used to laugh about was my dad's abuse of the customers. He truly had no compunctions about telling a customer to stop 'hanging over his shoulder' while he was working, or to "stop whining" when they complained about a price. He was basically an old hard-ass. But all that not withstanding, my dad TRULY believed in customer service - well, his brand of (old school) customer service anyway.

My dad believed in the following 3 anchors of customer service:
Fast Service
Affordable Prices
Quality Work

He never articulated this, but it was VERY clear that these were the three things he valued most - because if you violated any of these three core tenets, you could expect a vitriolic tongue-lashing in your next encounter. I've been on the receiving end of a few of these and I've spectated a few directed at the other guys that worked for him at the shop.

Notice that nowhere in that list is "the customer is always right" or "always be kind to the customer". Don't misunderstand - he was not abusive to customers, he was just very no-nonsense when dealing with them. He took complaints very seriously, was courteous on the phone, and tried his best to be professional. He just didn't believe that you could replace fast, affordable, quality work with lip service.

I'm starting to gain a new respect for his philosophy as I deal with many of the companies that I depend on for my business. I find the following to be their strategy:

Be Kind
Paraphrase the problem to the customer so they know you understand
Empathise ("I know this is frustrating, and we will take care of it")
Promise resolution ("we will take care of this for you today")
Be Kind

Notice nowhere in that list do we see any indication that the problem will actually be corrected, or that that they truly have an understanding of the underlying cause of the problem. This is the 'new deal' warm and fuzzy customer service. They have replaced qualified support folks with people who can 'be nice' at all costs.

I think I've come to understand that there must be a mix somewhere in between these two disparate philosophies. I think the old man had it esentially right though - his customers didn't always consider him their best friend, but they kept coming back because he kept true to "real" quality.

Remembering Norman 'Norm' Sterzenbach 9/14/1922 - 2/23/2007

Lack of Scope - Common Responses

Lack of Scope - a project killer for sure..projects with no finite definition of 'are we there yet?' and clients with little patience for being 'pinned down' to a set of deliverables. You WILL have these clients from time to time, and they are most certainly manageable - in fact they can be quite profitable clients in many cases, they just take a different style of management. In my years of managing technology projects, I've discovered that there are some fairly classifiable reactions to lack of scope.

The responses to lack of scope run a wild arc from doing surprising little for the money to packing so much into a project it becomes unusable. Many experienced firms will see lack of scope as a great money-maker as they will promise little and give even less. The client doesn't know what they need, so they never know if they received any value. If they dare complain to the development firm, they will be met with 'We gave you what we promised'. Note this is a far toss from 'We gave you what you needed'. Inexperienced architects tend to 'overgive' - they feel that if they 'just do more' the client will love the end result. The problem with this thinking is that it's usually NEVER enough of the right stuff and WAY too much of the wrong stuff. The client wants a shopping cart with 'all the bells and whistles' so the provider creates a shopping cart with 30 different kinds of discounting methods, but no wishlist or forward-to-friend functionality, so in the end it's discovered that the client really meant that he wanted more 'social' functionality and less 'pricing' functionality and the client is disappointed. Here it's a case of 'we did our very best' - but we all know that this is a slipperly benchmark at best. The client creates these situations as it's sort of a 'I'll tell you when you guess it' approach to project management, and it can be tricky. These clients aren't evil and they aren't stupid, the're just busy. The good news is that I've discovered something..if you know what you're doing you can usually strike a really nice balance for the client with very little input.

The reason an experienced (and introspective) manager can find the sweet spot so easily is because they have done so damn many of these types of projects (whatever type it is) and they 'just know' what needs to be in there. Also, you learn to read a client, their culture, and past projects they have commissioned and you get a feel for what rings their bell. With the understanding of 'what just works', some knowledge of the clients psyche, and a little patience, you can give the client something that is in their budget, satifies their wish to get some value out of their investment, and most importantly, actually creates a positive result for the client.

India - How COULD you??!!....!!

Well..here we have it folks. India's tourism folks have decided to stop accepting the dollar.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,319807,00.html

My question is, why did they EVER accept the dollar? We don't take THEIR currency at our great tourism spots. I understand that many countries take our currency because we are such a financing force for their tourism markets, but it's OK if we have to exchange to trade. For example, I don't recall the heritage museum in Springfield offering rupees as an accepted currency for the non-compulsory donation box..

I think this is just an example of the media say Nyeah Nyeah Oh how the mighty have fallen..etc. etc. ad nauseum..

My take? Who CARES if India's tourism attractions don't take the dollar?