2011 FebruaryDate Archive

Worst customer service email ever?

By: David Kay 8 Comments
25 Feb

Readers -

I think a side benefit of writing a service and support blog is having a platform to hold really poor service up for ridicule…right?  We’ll get right back to serious topics next week, but in the meantime, let me share the worst customer service email I’ve ever gotten.  (At some personal risk, as you’ll see below.)

Quick background:  I had a poor experience at EZ Rent-a-Car at LAX this week.  I received a survey link, which I dutifully filled out.  The survey also had an email address for customer service; I contacted them.  (Remember:  a complaint is a gift, right?)  Here’s the only response I’ve received, which I’m reproducing here verbatim, except for removing the survey links.  My comments are in italics.

Dear DAVID KAY,

This is the best part of the email–they got my name right, although it was in all caps.  It’s all downhill from here.

Thank you again for choosing E-Z Rent-A-Car, The Best Value in Car Rental, for your car rental needs.

In fact, I think this is the first time they’ve thanked me, so they’re not really thanking me again.  And if they looked at my survey, they may find that describing themselves as the “Best Value in Car Rental” may be inappropriate from my perspective.

br />We sincerely appreciate that you have taken the time previously to complete our online survey. If you wish, you may complete the survey again by clicking on the link below.

Nothing says “a focus on quality” quite like random bits of HTML tags in an email.  And why do they want me to take the survey again?  Is this their way of telling me they deleted my first response? Am I supposed to take it until I provide answers they like?  Or does someone have a response rate goal they’re not meeting, and duplicate surveys will help their numbers?

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY

All caps again.  Stop yelling.

If the above link does not work, copy and paste the following line into your browser’s address bar:

http://www.e-zrentacar.com/survey.asp?survey_id=(uniqueIDDeleted)

Sincerely,

Customer Care Department

E-Z Rent-A-Car

The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else is unauthorized. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful.

OK.  You send me a form letter telling me I can (re)take a survey, and now you’re threatening me with legal action if I tell people about it?  Um, as I am in this blog?  I can’t wait for the cease and desist…I’ll be sure to post that, too.  Remember, I didn’t ask for this email, so don’t start telling me what I can and can’t do with it.

The contents of this email do not necessarily represent the views or policies of E-Z Rent-A-Car or employees.

They close with my favorite line.  It’s an official customer service email, including legal threat, that doesn’t reflect their views or policies, either as individuals or as a company.

I am completely bumfuzzled as to what these people were thinking.  Am I right: is this the worst customer service email ever, or do you have an even worse one?  Please share in the comments.

Back to KM next week,

David

Identifying the “bright spots”

By: Jennifer Crippen 0 Comments
22 Feb

Change is hard. It’s tough to change our behaviors: to eat less or read more. We’ve failed before, so we put up barriers to future attempts at change. I just finished a great book called Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Dan and Chip Heath. Many of us involved with KCS have firsthand experience with changing behaviors in our organizations—it’s one of the biggest challenges of implementing KCS. We understand that it takes practice, the right messaging, long term perspective and commitment to the processes. But if we know this, how is that we so often mess up getting the change to stick?

I have often said that I love change, embrace and welcome it. I have always thought it best to attempt to focus on the positive in learning to do things differently in order to obtain a goal. Thinking this way and doing it successfully are very different things.

One of my most favorite nuggets from Switch is focused on what they call the “bright spots”. If you can identify the things that are working, like who are the people adopting and embracing KCS in your organization and why, then figure out how to recognize those “bright spots” and parlay them into your program adoption plan.  Figure out what works and focus on the positive. Don’t try to fix what’s broken; recognize the successes instead.

By identifying and recognizing positive results instead of negative ones, we can more likely create the change we are looking for. Carol says to her peers, “Look at Margo and Philip. They are practicing KCS and getting recognized for their contribution.  Maybe I should check it out too!” We didn’t say to Carol that she had to do something else or something different…she identified a need to change her KCS behaviors, on her own.

I found the examples in this book to be exactly what I am able to best learn from: real stories, experiences, results and research. Switch gave me more effective methods for making change happen to place in my toolbox. I will be incorporating these methods and examples into future KCS Workshops.

Amazon.com: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
by Heath and Heath

ps – See what the KCS Book Club is up to or become a member: http://groupspaces.com/KCSBookClub/

How Self-Service Fails

By: David Kay 0 Comments
17 Feb

Photo credit: Arrr! Via Flickr. Creative Commons Attribution license.

Often, the first step in making something work really well is to figure out how it can fail…and then making sure it doesn’t.  In the case of self-service, most studies show that customers are successful less than half of the time (sometimes far less.)  So clearly, there’s plenty of failure to eliminate!

Here are some ways we’ve seen self-service fail, from our engagements with clients and from our own personal experience.  How many of these barriers to success might frustrate your customers?  And how many of them can you eliminate or reduce?

  • The answer to my question isn’t here. (This often speaks to traditional, slow-moving knowledge management practices—consider KCS.)
  • Or, if it’s here, I can’t find it. (Is knowledge written from the customer’s point of view, using their words and context?  Do you have a competent search engine that returns relevant content from any source?)
  • I found the answer, but I don’t like it very much.  I’ll try calling. (Are you more flexible on polices, for example, warranty returns, if your customer calls?  You teach people how to treat you…)
  • My eyes are glazing over. (Is your portal neat, clean, and streamlined?  Just because someone created a tool doesn’t mean that it deserves a link on your support home page.)
  • Huh…what? (Do you require your customers to learn your organization and your jargon?)
  • Don’t blow sunshine up my skirt. (Look on the bright side of life, but don’t try to rewrite a break-fix answer as a how-to.  Self-service is not the place to spin the facts–that will just send users to find someone they do trust.)
  • I bet you know, but you aren’t telling me. (This is what web maven Steve Krug means when he says a website should “be a mensch.”  If people think you know about a problem but aren’t talking about it, they lose faith in you and your product or service.)
  • I wanted an answer, not a dissertation. (Any words that don’t take customers one step closer to a resolution should be eliminated.  Link to more complete background explanations—right now, let’s make it “just the facts, ma’am.”)
  • The answer isn’t showing up on Google. (Is there any way you can make at least some of your content available without a login?  And have you invested in Search Engine Optimization (SEO?)  Increasingly, whether we like it or not, search engines are the self-service portal of choice.)

What self-service problems are you trying to avoid?