Live Experiment: Still no resolution from Whirlpool

It's been a few weeks since I last blogged about my efforts to resolve a customer service issue with Whirlpool, so I thought I'd provide a short update.

Background
We have a subscription where Whirlpool automatically sends out a new water filter for our refrigerator every six months and bills the credit card they have on file. Our credit card recently expired, but so far we've been unable to give Whirlpool the updated information. (You can follow previous posts here.)

Update
A customer service representative called me and left a voice message offering to help. We played phone tag for a few days until he stopped calling. One thing I noticed is he said he returned calls in the order they were received and could take up to one business day to respond. The last voice message I left him contained dates and times when I would be available since I wasn't going to be around the following day. This probably threw off his system of returning calls at his convenience, which I imagine is why he didn't call again.

My wife and I have now contacted Whirlpool a total of 13 times in an affort to update our credit card information. It's beyond ridiculous that they can't fix this, but I can guess at the real culprit. If you were to pry open the Whirlpool's customer service and parts fulfillment operation you'd find a hodge-podge of broken systems. Silos between teams, computer systems that don't talk to each other, and pointless policies. It's just a guess, but it's hard to believe my experience is all that unique.

I wish I were David Allen
David Allen is the author of one of my favorite books on personal productivity, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.

He also has a bit more social media clout than I do. Check out this Tweet from earlier this week: 

Less than 24 hours later he sent out this Tweet: 

If you are on Twitter, check out the full conversation that includes replies from some of David Allen's followers. Some of them are spot on. You can also see a few Tweets from Adobe in the mix.

Why you need to view service through your customers' eyes

This sign greeted me as I entered a parking lot on a recent Tuesday morning:

I chuckled as I imagined what someone might think if they didn’t realize that Tuesday Morning was the name of a store. Yes, that scenario seems a bit far-fetched, but it’s a good reminder that customers can often view a situation in different or even unexpected ways.

This is a topic I’ve blogged about before. Two years ago, I shared a post about a sign taped to an ice cream cooler that either advertised a nice selection or the worst flavor imaginable (Seeing things from the customer’s perspective). This time around, I’ll relay a story from a friend of mine plus share a few strategies I use for gaining customer insight.

"You're no longer welcome"
A friend of mine recently posted an update on her Facebook page complaining that she had been refused an appointment at her hair salon. Apparently, she had been a no-show for an average of 1 in 9 appointments, so the hair salon finally decided to turn away her business. From the salon’s point of view, no-shows cost them money since that appointment slot would otherwise have been filled, so it made sense to cut loose an unreliable customer.

However, I doubt the hair salon considered my friend’s perspective when they made their decision or when they delivered the message. Predictably, she was quite angry to be abruptly told she was no longer welcome. It also made her remember the poor service she had received on her last visit, where she had previously forgotten about it because overall she really liked the place. Her post on Facebook drew many supportive comments and offers to refer her to another hair dresser.

How to see through the customers’ eyes
The challenge is our customers’ perspective is often only obvious in hindsight. It takes consistent, deliberate effort to really get inside your customers’ heads before a service failure occurs. Here are a few techniques you can use:

Teach empathy. The ability to empathize with another person comes from having a relatable experience, but customer service employees often have difficulty relating to their customers. Through proper training, employees can learn techniques to see things from their customers’ point of view (see 5 Ways to help employees empathize more).

Dig deep into survey data. The problem with a lot of customer survey data is it’s presented in aggregate, but those averages don’t tell the full story. For example, a client mined their survey data and discovered that one particular problem accounted for the overwhelming majority of customer dissatisfaction.

Look for icebergs. It’s easy to dismiss strange feedback as an isolated incident involving a confused and disoriented customer. However, in some cases this feedback may be just the tip of the iceberg. A favorite technique of mine involves digging deeper to see if there’s a systematic problem (see What the FAA can teach us about icebergs).

Live experiment: the cost of poor service

I've been trying to resolve a very simple customer service problem with Whirlpool, but their customer service system is so hopelessly broken that I can't get any help. After my wife contacted them five times with no success, I decided to blog about my efforts to try to get a resolution.

Today's post contains an update and an examination of how much this service failure may end up costing Whirlpool.

Background
We have a subscription where Whirlpool automatically sends out a new water filter for our refrigerator every six months and bills the credit card they have on file. Our credit card recently expired, but so far we've been unable to give Whirlpool the updated information. (You can follow previous posts here.)

Update
My wife and I have now contacted Whirlpool's customer service 11 times with no resolution. It boggles my mind that a company's customer service team couldn't figure out how to update a credit card expiration date after 11 contacts, but some how Whirlpool has managed to pull it off.

In the meantime, I had to go to Best Buy to purchase a new filter for my refrigerator since I couldn't wait any longer for Whirlpool to get their act together. It cost me 30 extra minutes of my time to make the trip and I paid about $5 more at Best Buy than I would have under Whirlpool's subscription service. Not the end of the world, but very, very annoying. (Service shout out to Best Buy in Santee, CA. They always provide me with attentive, helpful service!)

Yesterday, I did get a voice message from a customer service representative at Whirlpool. He asked me to call him directly, but had left by the time I received the message. He indicated he wouldn't be back in the office until Monday, so I'll try to call him them. That will bring the running total to 12 contacts, but I hope this will be the last.

Lost Value
At this point, I'm asking for three things from Whirlpool to satisfactorily resolve this issue.

  1. A free filter to compensate my wife and I for all of our effort.
  2. An apology sent directly to my wife for their poor customer service.
  3. Updating our credit card expiration date so we won't have to go through this again.

To put this into perspective, let's take a look at what's at stake for Whirlpool:

It costs money each time one of their customer service representatives has to respond to another inquiry.

My home has 7 Whirlpool appliances. One of them, my clothes washer, is near the end of its life. In the past, I may have automatically bought a Whirlpool. Now, I wouldn't consider them unless this issue is resolved.

I will continue to post updates on this blog about my experience. (I'll also gladly post any positive developments.)

How hard can it be to update an expired credit card, Whirlpool?!

Yesterday, I shared a service failure I was experiencing with Whirlpool. You can read the post here: "Will Whirlpool fix their service failure?"

I thought it might be interesting to share everything my wife, Sally, and I have done so far to try to update the credit card they have on file for us. It's amazing that in 2012, something so simple and common can become an extremely frustrating and impossible task.

Background
We have a subscription where Whirlpool automatically sends out a new water filter for our refrigerator every six months and bills the credit card they have on file. Our credit card recently expired, but so far we've been unable to give Whirlpool the updated information.

Timeline
The whole process started when Sally received an email telling her that the credit card we had on file need to be updated. Here is a list of our unsuccessful attempts so far:

1. Online. Sally attempted to update the credit card online but their website wasn't working properly.

2. Chat. Sally initiated a chat session to get help. The chat session was disconnected before Sally could pose her question.

3. Chat. Sally initiated another chat session. This time, the person attempted to walk her through updating our credit card online but it still didn't work. The customer service rep then provided a phone number where Sally could call customer service.

4. Phone. Sally called customer service. The customer service rep informed her that he didn't have access to our account and could only walk her through the steps for updating her credit card online. It still didn't work.

5. Email. Sally emailed Whirlpool customer service and explained her multiple attempts to update her credit card information. She received a response instructing her to go online. It still didn't work.

6. Twitter. I sent a tweet to @Whirlpoolcare asking for help. I also mentioned I wanted an option besides online because that wasn't working. They gave me a new phone number to call.

7. Phone. I called the new number and, after being transferred, was told the only way to update my credit card was online. 

Now Sally and I back where I started. If you were me, what would you do?

Will Whirlpool fix their service failure?

My wife, Sally, recently experienced an incredibly frustrating and annoying service failure from Whirlpool. She contacted them no less than five times to resolve an amazingly simple problem with no results. I hope you can understand that when your wife is angry about a service issue and you are a customer service consultant with a blog, you are obligated to write about it!

Background
We have a KitchenAid refrigerator (manufactured by Whirlpool) that needs a new water filter every six months or so. Up until now, it's been a simple process. We're signed up for automatic re-order where Whirlpool simply sends out a new filter and charges our credit card when it's time to replace the old one. This is a great example of the type of anticipatory customer service Micah Solomon refers to in his book, High-tech, High-touch Customer Service.

Last week, Sally received an email letting her know it was time again to send a replacement filter, but the credit card they had on file for us had expired. Updating an expired credit card should be a simple process, but this is where the trouble began.

Sally contacted Whirlpool a minimum of five times in an attempt to provide our updated credit card information, but each time she was stonewalled by a broken system and ineffective customer service reps. The end result was our credit card information never got updated, our order was cancelled, and we don't have a new filter.

The Experiment
A couple of years ago, I blogged about my attempts to resolve a customer service issue with Avis (Live Experiment: Will Avis finally try hard enough?). It turned out pretty well in that it caught the attention of the right people at Avis who finally fixed the issue. I've actually been a loyal customer ever since, so I am hopeful I can get a similar result from Whirlpool. 

My plan is to use my blog, Twitter, and my personal network to detail my efforts to get Whirlpool to fix their service failure. I also invite your suggestions and comments along the way.

My Demands
Nobody should have to go through as much hassle as Sally has to do business with a company. I have two requests from Whirlpool to fix this problem:

  1. A replacement filter, sent free of charge. 
  2. An apology sent to Sally.

If you'd like to know what happens next, you can stay tuned by subscribing to my blog or following me on Twitter.

Ten bad leadership habits that lead to poor service

There are people for whom customer service is a core value, one that is always present in their personal and professional lives. When these types of people lead customer service teams, their teams tend to work magic.

There are also people who don't truly believe in customer service. When these people lead customer service teams, service failures tend to be the norm. They may talk a good game to try to convince their customers, their employees, and even themselves that service is indeed important. However, their true colors are eventually revealed by their bad habits. 

Here are ten examples of bad leadership habits that cause service failures:

  1. Unable to clearly articulate what outstanding customer service looks like.
  2. Too impatient to do things right.
  3. Focused on catching employees doing things wrong instead of helping them do things right.
  4. Too busy to provide employees with training, coaching, or direction.
  5. Failing to respond to email and voice mail in a timely manner.
  6. Allowing employees to continuously provide poor service.
  7. Disciplining employees for behaviors they regularly exhibit themselves.
  8. Treating employees disrespectfully.
  9. Asking employees to do things they wouldn't do themselves.
  10. Making excuses for any of the above.

What bad habits would you add to this list?

Jeff Toister is the author of Service Failure: The Real Reasons Employees Struggle with Customer Service and What You Can Do About It. The book is scheduled to be released on November 1.

You can learn more about the book at www.servicefailurebook.com or pre-order a copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell's Books.

2012 Call Center Demo & Conference Re-cap

I attended the 2012 Call Center Demo & Conference last week in Dallas, Texas. If you are like me, you find it hard to keep track of all the brilliant ideas, inspiring speakers, and helpful contacts you come across at a conference like this. And, it's sometimes just too difficult to choose between going to one session or another! 

With this in mind, I put together a re-cap of some of the conference highlights. 

Conference Overview

If you didn't attend, you may want to start by familiarizing yourself with the conference:

Day 1 Site Tours

Day 1 of the conference featured site tours to several call centers in the Dallas area. (See tour schedule.) This was a travel day for me, so I missed out, but participants were definitely abuzz about their experiences. The tour of the NOVO 1 call center generated a lot of conversation in particular:

Day 2 Keynote: Ann Tardy

Ann Tardy opened Day 2 with an inspiring keynote, Rousing the Remarkable: The Secret To Unleashing Moxie in a Mediocre World. Ann's credentials:

There were plenty of quotes from Ann's presentation on Twitter:

  • @MartaKelsey: "To influence your team members you must understand them and how they tick"
  • @sstealey: "People love to make a difference! Leaders are key to influencing their success." Ann Tardy is giving us those keys!
  • @bobfurniss: "Give people permission to fail. Fear of failure is a barrier to success but a powerful opportunity to learn."
  • @hawgbald: "Reject "lookism"... making assumptions about people by their appearance."
  • @chammarb: Ann Tardy tells us, "Declare a battle cry." What's YOUR battle cry?

Day 3 Keynote: Garrison Wynn

Garrison Wynn kicked off Day 3 with a humorous and energetic keynote, Mastering the Art of Influence. Garrison's credentials:

Once again, Twitter made it easy to collect inspiring and helpful quotes from Garrison's presentation:

  • @DanielDougherty: "Trust is built on 2 things: compassion and competence."
  • @justinmrobbins: "The #1 thing that people value is feeling valued."
  • @hawgbald: "The leading cause of stress is knowing exactly what you need to be doing and doing something else."

Day 3: The Journey to a Customer-focused Culture

I facilitated a session on day three that discussed ways to build a customer-focused culture in your call center. The participants were wonderfully involved and energized, making it a fun session for me. Here are some resources from the session in case you missed it:

More Learning

Going to a conference (or missing out on one) can sometimes generate a strong desire to keep learning about a particular topic. Here's another opportunity to gain more knowledge:

Webinar: Three Hidden Causes of Call Center Service Failures

Date & Time: Wednesday, November 7; 10am - 11am Pacific (1pm - 2pm Eastern)

Cost: Free thanks to our sponsor, Voiance Language Services

Click here to register

If you attended the conference, what was your biggest take-away?

Jeff Toister is the author of Service Failure: The Real Reasons Employees Struggle with Customer Service and What You Can Do About It. The book is scheduled to be released on November 1.

You can learn more about the book at www.servicefailurebook.com or pre-order a copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell's Books.

3 Strategies to Keep Your Incentives from Backfiring

Note: This post original appeared on August 28, 2012 as an article on the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) website. I'm reposting it in honor of my upcoming session at ICMI's 2012 Call Center Demo & Conference. While it focuses on call centers, I believe the lessons are universal.

Call center managers often turn to a variety of incentives and rewards to encourage good performance. Examples include games with prizes awarded to the winning teams, cash bonuses paid to reps who meet certain performance targets, or gift cards given to recognize a special achievement such as a perfect QA score. Before implementing a similar program in your call center, you may want to examine evidence that suggests incentives and rewards can actually cause poor performance if used incorrectly.

Here are three examples of problems that can be caused by incentives or rewards, and the strategies to help keep them in check:

1. Problem: Reduced Motivation
Psychologist Edward Deci conducted an experiment in 1971 where subjects were asked to solve various puzzles with a set of blocks called a Soma cube. Participants were given some free time between activities and Deci noticed that many people continued to practice solving the puzzles on their own. When Deci announced a cash prize for each puzzle completed, participants spent even more of their free time practicing. However, when Deci stopped offering the reward, participants correspondingly stopped spending their free time working on the puzzles.

The lesson from Deci’s experiment is that an external incentive can reduce internal motivation. Let’s say you introduce a contest where agent can earn a gift card for meeting their schedule adherence goal for the week. Chances are you’ll see schedule adherence go up over the next week as people try to earn the prize.

But what about the following week when the contest is over? Schedule adherence will probably get worse, perhaps even sinking below pre-contest levels. You can keep running the same contest each week, but those gift cards can start getting expensive.

Strategy: Ask for employee input. Rather than holding a contest to promote better schedule adherence, engage employees in honest and open dialogue to identify obstacles that prevent them from doing better. You’ll likely gain new ideas for improving schedule adherence while earning your employees’ commitment to implement the solutions they helped create.

2. Problem: Diverted Attention
Another side effect of using incentives is they can divert your agents’ attention away from the desired performance. Perhaps your call center offers employees a cash bonus if they achieve the target score on a customer satisfaction survey. Your goal may be improving customer satisfaction, but the incentive will focus employees on earning good survey scores.

It’s a small, but important difference. Employees may offer happy customers extra encouragement to complete a post-call survey but not mention the survey to upset customers. They may try to blame problems on other employees or departments so unhappy customers will still give them high individual marks. They might even be too quick to transfer difficult calls to other departments to avoid a negative survey score. All of these actions can skew the survey results while helping employees earn their bonus.

Strategy: Enroll employees in a collective cause. Rather than incentivizing survey scores, set a team goal for customer satisfaction. Share survey results in team meetings and one-on-one discussions and solicit employee ideas for improving results. Asking for employees to contribute to a team effort creates a powerful connection to internal motivation.

3. Problem: Unethical Behavior
Incentives can also lead to bad behavior if the reward far outweighs the risk. For example, a software company might hold a contest with its technical support team to see who can close the most trouble tickets within the time specified in their service level agreement (SLA). If the prize for winning the contest is valuable enough, reps may be motivated to close tickets before the problem is fully resolved. This tactic may result in meeting the SLA, but it will also undoubtedly frustrate many customers and cause a spike in trouble tickets.

Strategy: Recognize, rather than incentivize, great performance. In his best-selling book, Drive, author Daniel Pink demonstrates that rewards can be more effective when they are unexpectedly given after the performance occurs. Rather than holding a contest to see who can close trouble tickets the fastest, you can periodically recognize reps for going above and beyond the call of duty to fix a problem for a customer. This sends the message that their contributions are valued without diverting their attention away from their job.

Conclusion
Studies have consistently shown that managers believe employees are much more motivated by external incentives than is actually the case. As you can see from the above examples, tapping into your employees’ own internal motivation is often a better way to improve performance.

Jeff Toister is the author of Service Failure: The Real Reasons Employees Struggle with Customer Service and What You Can Do About It. The book is scheduled to be released on November 1.

You can learn more about the book atwww.servicefailurebook.com or pre-order a copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell's Books.