Customer Service Hero -- or Company Liability?

Posted by Lew McCreary on April 17, 2008 8:54 AM

In an era marked by generally lower service standards in all kinds of industries, I had a singular encounter last week with a genuine service missionary named John (see Frances X. Frei’s HBR article,“The Four Things a Service Business Must Get Right”).

John is a furnace guy. He works for the oil company that delivers nearly $4/gallon heating oil to my house. He was there to do annual maintenance on my 25-year-old boiler. He arrived around 2:40 and stayed until 4, doing quite a bit more for my furnace than other guys had in other years. By the time he left, the unit was humming.

While he worked he told me that even though he’s employed by an oil company, he and his colleagues also service gas systems. “When something goes wrong with a gas furnace, the gas company tells you to call a plumber.” John’s company can sometimes win converts by coming to the rescue. He also said he’d just come from the house of an 80-plus-year-old customer with an ailing wife. The customer needed a new furnace but didn’t have the money for it.

“It breaks your heart,” said John. “Hell, if I thought he could just afford to pay for the parts I’d go over there myself on the weekend and put it together for him.”

The final wrinkle to this story is that John’s company went through a period of strict emphasis on service metrics. Management decreed that maintenance visits should be completed in a specified amount of time, regardless of the needs of the boiler in question. John looks back on this as a dark period in the company’s history, from which it—and he—are still recovering. But like a good primary care physician with a patient, he clearly relished being able to give my furnace as much time as he believed it needed.

So the question is this: Is someone like John a hero or a liability? Now liberated from metrics, is he squandering a scarce company resource—his time? Or is he building customer loyalty by the boiler?

Comments

Oh, this one's close to my operational-management heart!

Companies who force people like John to hit arbitrary activity targets are missing the point and actually *costing* themselves money when they think they're saving it.

Instead of activity, they should measure against purpose.

Did John take too long? It depends. The right length of time was whatever it took to fix the problem from the perspective of the customer.

* If he left before that point, he'll cause the customer to get back in touch again (expensive for the co).
* If he stuck around and added extra bells and whistles that didn't add anything to the fix, then yes - he's wasting time.
* To judge if that's a problem you need to ask if the extra time built extra loyalty - and whether that's key to strategy.

I'm glad John's company learned to ditch the activity metrics - *so* many haven't yet. Every time a 'productivity' target is set, somewhere a systems thinker cries.

- Posted by Helen B
April 18, 2008 4:03 PM

I think Helen B nailed it. You should only measure activity if your goal is strictly productivity. But a better measure would include purpose and/or customer satisfaction. Only then are you getting and measuring true productivity. Measuring work through activity only is not effective, productive, or strategic.

Many, many call centers have not figured that out yet.

- Posted by Bob Palacios
April 20, 2008 6:32 PM

Unfortunately many call centers are measured by service level agreements which take the personal one-on-one touch out of the equation. My team wastes very valuable time on quickly responding even if there is no action taken on the ticket. Then we spend much of my management team’s time on cleaning up the mess left behind. But I guess there is a large difference when you are dealing one-on-one with customers that you hope return for your service.

- Posted by Jason G
April 20, 2008 9:29 PM

Well this reminds one of the postman who used to visit remote areas. He would in the old times spend time chatting to the customers - and he represented a vital link for many of the elderly and infirm. Then they brought in regulations in which a meter was inserted into the dashboard - and like long distance truck drivers, he would be penalised or fired if he spent too long in unessential locations. Of course now with many people writing online, the post office is losing out. Now I think the service and contact time of the old days would actually be a plus! I think that a contact time (corporate social responsibility factor) should be added to all work that involves direct communication with customers. It is a real value and would enhance the corporation's reputation. The argument that the premium customers should be given the most time, should be put in the context of the number of general customers - and a ratio created on that basis. As for John. No he is no liability - but an asset.

- Posted by Stephen Pain
April 21, 2008 7:54 AM

A little too quick on the keys - I meant of course infirmed

- Posted by Stephen Pain
April 21, 2008 7:56 AM

How you measure someone will determine how they behave. (and therefore the results they produce).

Here in the UK, there was a famous case of telephone directory employee's being bonused if they could provide numbers within 40 seconds. Not surprisingly, they all qualified for the bonus. How? By providing incorrect numbers...

- Posted by Dennis Lillee
April 23, 2008 11:33 AM

What's the real value of providing a service if you can't deliver real value. As a case in point. Years ago when I worked in retail sales, I had taken the time to help a customer who came in for assistance with selecting the right brand of recording tape and provide some technical assistane. I had learned from my sales manager that being patient and developing a long term relationship is important to providing long term value. Well, one day this person came in, and decided to put down money on the most expensive home theater system that the store ever generated. And after the purchase, this doctor came back and bought more merchandise.

If you measured the intial amount of time I spent on this customer compared to the revenue I generated (20 minutes to sell a $5.00 tape), many metric-driven companies would likely view the sale as a failure.

This short-term vision is also common in most web site metric analysis that merely measures time spent versus the money generated. Instead, gthe measurment should consider the long-term value that is created by providing real value to solve a customer's problems and gain their long term trust and sales.

- Posted by Joe Gannon
May 21, 2008 11:48 PM