Having productive meetings with the customer

Ineffective meetings with customers, result in wasted time, unachieved objectives and impact the productivity of an organization. Though not tangible, such meetings draw out actions, and inevitably result in a bottom-line impact to the corporation. So what can be done to run effective meetings.

Symptoms
Some of the symptoms of ineffective meetings are when people are all over the map, there is no clear leader in control, people are talking over people, no actions get assigned and the wrong people are involved. Generally these meetings will end with no conclusion on issues and will defer to having more meetings on that topic. Sometimes media inefficacy like a bad phone line, improper connectivity or such snags can jeopardize meetings as well.

Talk to the customer before holding the actual meeting
The purpose of this conversation would be to uncover what the customer wants to talk about. Set goals and outcomes of meetings. Have a well defined agenda and get buy-in from the customer about the line items on the agenda. Talk about who will participate in the meeting and what their role will be. It does not make sense to just take people for the sake of taking people.

Bring everyone on the same page
Circulate the findings from the customer to the appropriate people on your side, and if you have the authority, on the side of the customer. Get any objections people have to it out of the way. Solicit input if needed before firming up and circulating the agenda.

Make sure about availability of key people
Confirm people’s attendance by sending out an invite. These days people use Microsoft Outlook quite often. For remote attendees make sure that they have all the information to attend via computer or phone line. Pay attention to what time zone people are in.

Adhere to the agenda
During the meeting it is very easy, and often the case, for people to get rat holed into discussions that are not relevant or waste time. If you are the leader, focus on what you want to accomplish ie the agenda. Adhere to the topics and have constant time checks on issues. Offline any issue that might need more discussion. Where possible, make crisp decisions than postpone them. Challenge people if they deviate from issues. Make sure you have one meeting not several side conversations going on. Assign action items where needed and assign timelines to them. Discuss next steps.

After the meeting
It is really important that you circulate the minutes of the meeting afterwards to all the attendees and others who might need to know. Clear actions need to be assigned with clear owners. People have a tendency to forget as soon as they leave a meeting. Use this as the starting agenda of any follow-up meetings that you might have.

This might seem trite and trivial but you’ll be amazed that north of 75% meetings are run very poorly. Just being conscious of and adhering to a few basic guidelines can really enhance your productivity.

Customer satisfaction as a function of managing customer expectations

More often than not poor customer satisfaction is a result of mis-managed customer expectations. Most vendors tend to over promise and under deliver. However, by following some guidelines this can be avoided.

Understand customer pain points
Before proposing any solutions the vendor should try to understand the customer’s pain points. These might be issues gating customer progress. While trying to understand these issues you should constantly validate and clarify the issues with the customer. This can be done by asking open-ended questions and letting the customer vent and describe their issues. You should be in careful listening mode at this time.

Be upfront with customers
Customers can see through vendors who are trying to sugar coat things or set wrong expectations with them. The best policy is to be upfront with the customer. Be honest in dates for deliverables and any other commitments that you might have. Setting the right expectations and delivering what you say you will deliver goes a long way in customer satisfaction.

Put a process in place to track issues
Putting a process in place helps have control over the customer deployment/support process.
Ask customers to use your tracking system to log issues if you have one. Assign owners both externally and internally and also put timelines on when those issues will be fixed. If reports can be generated from time to time, they should be circulated to key individuals at the customer and within your organization.

Have regular status meetings
You will be amazed at how things will distort and change if time elapses between regular meetings. Make sure you have regular status meetings to get updates from both sides. Invite key individuals who understand the issues and hold responsibility in getting the task done. Basically, these meetings keep the project on track. Also poll the customer if they are happy with the support in these meetings. Ask them why if they are not.

Put an escalation mechanism in place
For issues that demand special or urgent attention have a clear path for escalation. There should be no ambiguity in the customer's mind as to what this path is. Failure to do so unnecessarily results in escalations to upper management levels which in reality are not needed. This leads to thrashing and lot of wasted time.

Following these guidelines will result in better customer satisfaction.

Customer service and corporate culture – is support an afterthought?

What does it take for customer support to be successful within an organization? Success as measured by customers providing good feedback to the vendor and also fewer escalations.

Most organizations focus on topline growth ie selling. How much effort is spent into supporting the customer after the sale occurs, is often de-emphasized and ignored. Sales is typically incentivized by bringing in the money. They have little or no interest in how the product is deployed or supported afterwards until the time a new deal could be crafted at that customer. That is just a reality of life.

So what does it take to foster a corporate culture that does not ignore support at any time.

What the CEO thinks of support?
The attitude at the top will inevitably permeate the organization.
Is the attitude that of drive-by selling? Is the attitude to hand hold customers through all phases of association – sales, deployment?
Are customers viewed as complainers and whiners who constantly ask for more and don’t pay enough? If that is the case the same culture will be reflected in dealings at a much lower level. It will promote a culture of mediocrity & customer dissatisfaction that will sooner or later impact sales.

What are employees measured on?
As part of their management objectives, are employees rewarded for selling and not supporting? Is support considered the “dirty work” while sales, marketing and R&D get to work on the fun stuff? This will create a culture where most employees will gravitate towards jobs associated with selling because that is where the glory will be. Great emphasis should be given to promoting/rewarding actions that are representative of supporting customers well.

Attitude towards the customer
Are customer queries/issues brushed off as meaningless complaints? Is it “their” problem not “ours”? Is the customer “stupid” that s/he can’t understand something so “simple”?
Do solutions to customer problems become “internal battles” between warring factions of the company? Do you always over promise and under deliver? All these questions reek of a “we don’t care about you” attitude towards the customer. From the customer point of view you are viewed as one company. Internal excuses should not be their problem. It is very important to listen to customers, understand the issue, take full ownership of it and finally fix the issue. One key metric people forget is closing the loop with the customer whether they are satisfied with the fix.

Internal communication
Are support agents clear on the go-to personnel and processes they need internally to support a customer well. Is ownership and access to subject matter experts (SMEs) defined well.? Is there clarity on the escalation process? Is there enough teamwork that issues don’t “fall through the cracks” and the problem solving flow is maintained? If not, this will result in “thrashing” of issues. It will also be inefficient and result in delayed response times, poor quality responses leading to customer unhappiness.

Accountability
What happens if the customer is not happy with support in their account? How does the company deal with someone who “dropped the ball”? Corporations should constantly monitor the provision of support to customers by doing internal audits. This could be in the form of quick evaluations of workload and quality of responses as well as feedback loops from customers. Constant effort should be spent to purge non-performers from the system at regular intervals.

Tracking
Does the company have good ways to track how and when customers are supported? Investment in some good tracking systems generally pays for itself over time. It enables management to do fact-based analysis by looking at trends rather than “gut” feel about issues. Does your corporation regard this as an “unnecessary expense”? That might reflect a reactive culture.

Hiring
People need to have the right mindset to help people solve issues. This is a combination of technical and soft skills. As part of the interview process it should be made sure that the candidate is evaluated for both these skills. As part of the corporate culture you should strike a balance between the two when hiring.

Corporations should emphasize promoting a culture where great customer service is encouraged by taking these factors into account.

Global Support – The changing Mantra

The corporate landscape has changed globally in the last decade. This has primarily been dictated by economics, unearthing of talent pools, and advances in technology. This has resulted in a variety of activities like outsourcing, off-shoring, etc. It has also resulted in geographically and culturally diverse teams working seamlessly to deliver products or services to a globally diverse customer base. While delivery of products is a challenge in its own right, supporting global consumers of these products is a challenge as well. How do you address this in an evolving flat world?

Have international “presence” of support
This does not necessarily mean that you need to have personnel in every continent. This means that customers anywhere should have the means to access support from the vendor with reasonable response time and acceptable answers. This should happen despite time differences in areas under consideration. This goes beyond direct, phone or email support.

Use advanced technology in supporting customers
Phone, email support has given way to web support. Online case resolution, knowledge databases promote self service. Discussion forums, online communities and social networks promote many-to-many interactions from subject matter experts (SMEs) that might reside outside the corporation in the customer base.

Specialize content
Customers care about specialized content related to their issues. Corporations need to focus on providing them content focused towards addressing that need. This could relate to customer profiles developed over time.

Have multiple channels of escalation
Customers should not feel trapped by self-service only. They should have the power and ability to escalate issues via other channels – a combination of email, web and self-service - if need be.

Make the interaction secure
This will make customers feel comfortable sharing their data with agents instead of asking for on-site support.

Offer incentives to customers to use self-service
Small incentives can go a long way. Offer knick-knacks for customers to use self-service. Have customers email in articles of successful experiences and have a periodic award for the best contributor. Also highlight contributors of answers on your forum. Recognition can be a motivator for people to contribute.

Routinely educate customers on new developments
This can be done via newsletters, podcasts, webinars etc. Customers can come to know about new features, releases, known issues, added solutions in the knowledge base, best practices etc. By doing this you are attempting to decrease your call volume before agent interaction.

Great vs. good support organizations?

What distinguishes great support organizations from good ones?

Process
Great support organizations follow a process. Irrespective of where the teams are located, these organizations are bound to follow a process. These serve as guidelines in tackling simple or complex problems. This also serves as a means for management to measure and maintain the quality of support. It also enables support personnel to deal with escalations. Anyone in the organization should know what the "next step" is in the support process. Nothing is more detrimental than the classic "run around" to the customer.

Metrics
Great support organizations are measured by metrics. These metrics might be as simple as measuring incoming cases, case closure, time to closure or number of cases escalated to R&D. Metrics gives support management a tool to monitor the effectiveness of support. It also promotes accountability in the ranks. Finally it might point out problematic areas in the product offering.

Soft skills
This is like the icing on the cake. All individuals are different. Some individuals who have better people interaction than others are likely to satisfy customers more, other things remaining constant. Soft skills give individuals the ability to connect with the customer at an emotional level besides the logical/technical support they provide. These include a variety of skills such as listening, saying no to the customer, dealing with abusive customers, phone/email communication skills and much more. Great support organizations heavily emphasize soft skills and routinely emphasize soft skill training.

Training
Technical or product training is essential for addressing customer needs. Customers log cases to get solutions to problems they have. Nothing can tick off a customer more than a support individual who does not know what they are doing. Incompetence in product knowledge leads to inferior support, delayed problem resolution or escalation - either one of these being detrimental to the organization. As product content changes, the support team should be kept abreast of the latest developments using training. Great support organizations put high emphasis on replenishing the skill set of support teams.

Knowledge Base
In order to decrease the support load on an organization, knowledge bases are developed. Ideally, a knowledge database should enable self service and 24/7 access for the customer.
This should also act as a filler to enable complete product coverage by the support team. Great support organizations will push customers to self-service databases as a first step and supplement that with other kinds of (email, web, phone, direct) support. This helps keep support cost down if done right.

Tiered support structure
Great support organizations will distinguish between customers based on significance (financial or strategic) to the corporation. Generally speaking in most corporations, the 80/20 rule applies. Eighty percent of the business comes from twenty percent of the customer base. Should these "Top 10" customers be treated differently. Absolutely. This is a business decision vs. an emotional one. Executive management should definitely put the same process in terms of providing support for everyone but monitor the top 10 customers closely. Bigger customers can be expected to "pay" for support and get "additional" perks besides the "regular" support. This might include more frequent review meetings, priority in fixing issues, executive sponsorship and perhaps even access to R&D.

Corporate Strategy
Great organizations will emphasize support as a key corporate function not as an afterthought.
They will realize that excellent support is often a key contributor to repeat business and customer loyalty. They will also view support as a feedback loop for product improvement and best practice promotion. Great support organizations can be an important source of revenue generation as well. Clear goals and organization structure coupled with clear lines of communication will foster this.