Public Power - July/August 2008 - (Page 46)

CUSTOMER SERVICE Less Service Is Better Service By Jim Paterson Bill Pricefor customerthat it is will tell you important service staffs to develop relationships with their customers. He can rattle off all the things that the many books, CDs and speakers on the topic commonly say about bolstering and increasing customer relations. But Price wants public power utilities to think about customer service differently. He wants them to do less of it. Price is co-author of the book “The Best Service is No Service,” which offers practical tips about how to improve customer relations. “Organizations really have to learn, however, that they need to tackle the problem before it becomes a customer service issue. Customer relationship management suggests that customers want a relationship with you. They probably don’t. Rather than focus on how a contact was handled, the question is ‘Did we need the contact to begin with?’” Price says that customer relations staffs should be proactive and reduce the need for customer relationships by, first, “eliminating dumb contacts.” Those include “touches” caused by the company because of confusion, delays, poor processes or defective products. There are also repeat contacts, where service personnel mishandle a first call. Those issues often can be easily addressed if there is a flow of information between management, production and customers, and if the structure of the system is evaluated. 46 JULY-AUGUST 2008 “We’ve recommended that a senior executive get a CD of recorded customer calls over a period or get copied on customer e-mails or spend time on the floor. When they do, the comment is almost always “Wow, I didn’t know this was an ongoing problem. How do we fix it?” said Price. Organizations need to research the reasons for contacts and make a “closed loop” system that improves communication between the customer service department and those making the product or providing the service. Price also notes that unneces- Self-service—if done properly and monitored—makes the customer happy and reduces the organization’s manpower needs. ATM machines are a good example. Implementing any new idea is difficult, although Price notes that several factors may motivate the organization: fear (about competition in the utility industry, for instance, or other outside forces), the need to cut costs (effective customer relations, or the elimination of it, reduces expenses), or seeing the potential of a new approach. Beyond that, he says, utilities often are bound by more rigid policies and rules, and sometimes suffer from management that comes from the engineering side of the organization and is less in tune with communications or customer relations. For person and get a satisfying response. He says organizations must build a system for contacts, allow them to flow easily and then evaluate and improve that structure continually. 2. Own actions across the company—Often contacts by customers are not in the control of the contact center. Thus, issues that arise should be dealt with by the department where they originate. Allow customer support to get the problem to the right place, but also give them the freedom and information to “make decisions and take actions that produce the best results for the customer.” 3. Listen and act—Gather good information from customers over time and use it to improve the organization. 4. Deliver great customer service—Organizations, he Customer relationship management suggests that customers want a relationship with you. They probably don’t. sary contacts are often made because a customer is in touch with the company for a question or concern that could have been handled automatically. “A lot of people blast self-service, but often customers want to be able to handle issues themselves. Unfortunately, organizations too often implement self-service features poorly and don’t monitor them or assess their effectiveness.” Effective customer-managed service results in fewer contacts per customer or per order, which is the type of metric all organizations—including public power utilities—should be looking at, rather than just increasing the efforts directed toward customer service. instance, often a utility’s legal office will inadvertently restrict innovation. “They are very effective, smart people who know how to run and protect a power company, but they may not be as familiar with the customer relations needs. Things also continue just from inertia in organizations like this. They sometimes need to rebalance.” Apart from reducing the need for customer relations, Price and his co-author David Jaffee offer four principles to guide customer service relations. 1. Make contact easy—Assure that when a customer really does need to contact the company they can get to the right says, need to get positive answers to four customer questions: Did the problem get fixed? How was I treated? Did I get the right answer? Did this get resolved in the manner and the time I expected? Organizations need to examine their efforts and continually monitor customer thinking. ❚ PUBLIC POWER

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - July/August 2008

Public Power- July/August 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions Solar Energy Rising Sacramento's Solar Shares Gainesville Crowns a Conservation Idol By the Numbers Curbing Costs of Outages Reliability Green Energy Hometown Connections Customer Service Parting Shot

Public Power - July/August 2008

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