Customer Service is at the Heart of Everything We Do!

Many people in the software and consulting world believe customer service is an after-market interaction with the client.  I would suggest that customer service begins with the first interaction anyone in your company has with a prospective client.  The seeds of your future relationship are planted with that first smile or handshake, with the first "Hello" or "Howdy".   Believing that customer service is part of these essential, early moments in your relationships is laying the groundwork for taking your client relationships to the partnership level. 

Memorable customer service is just that.  No matter when the call or email comes the reason it comes is always clear, someone needs help.  In Great companies, with the right people in the right seats, that call or email gets to someone who understands the often seemingly inverse relationship between how often a process is explained and how long that information is retained.   Or the person whose memory isn't clouded by how fruitless the efforts were the last time this person express interest in your solutions.  The person on the other end of the call or email will now in seconds if the decision to reach out was a good one.  Response time has a good deal to do with that, but so does the nature of the response.  Roger Staubach, former quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys said, "There are no traffic jams along the extra mile".  Responding with clear and concise information, coupled with extra doses of empathy and sincerity, will create the kind of loyalty that paves those extra miles.  Knowing that every interaction, by every member of your organization creates an impression, should be enough to guide the heartfelt nature of each opportunity.

Business decisions are often thought of as hard and tough. But more and more it seems that decisions regarding with whom business relationships are developed come down to something more than dollars and cents.  The biggest or most recognizable companies may not have the heart required to see where needs exists and how they can be met.  Listening and working together to find solutions from the first interaction through all that follow is the best and most enduring customer service plan you can implement.  With customer service at the heart of everything you do, people are happy,  everyone profits and everyone keeps moving forward! 

Denny Meredith-Orr
COO, Reliant

Selecting a Software Vendor: Tips from “Pretty Woman”

A business associate of mine recently began a search for a new payroll vendor.  He identified six well-known companies and requested information from each.  One of the six responded, “I am sorry sir.  Our sales team has a list of companies we want to pursue as customers, and your company is not on it.  We are unable to help you at this time”.  As he told me this story, I couldn’t help but think how he must feel like Vivian (Julia Roberts) in the famous shopping scene from “Pretty Woman”. For those unfamiliar, Vivian, an LA prostitute, enters a Hollywood boutique to purchase new clothes for herself at the request (and funding) of her most recent client. Unfortunately, Vivian still looks the part of her profession when she enters the boutique and immediately draws negative attention from the store’s management. The boutique’s pious salesperson looks down her nose at Vivian and says, “I’m sure we don’t have anything for you,” and all but pushes Vivian out the door. Vivian returns to the boutique with her wealthy client, Edward (Richard Gere) and is given a radically different shopping experience. Vivian becomes a VERY special customer deserving of “serious sucking up”.  What follows is a bit of movie magic pulled from many women’s shopping fantasies.  Julia is wined and wooed by the store manager for a shopping experience of a lifetime.  What a difference it makes when your business is strongly desired!

Maybe the example is extreme, but there is a bit of truth to it. Most business managers agree that “80% of a (software vendor’s) business stems from 20% of its customers.” So, which customers are likely to receive a vendor’s best service? The customers that drive the vast majority of the company’s bottom line? Or the ones that individually contribute comparatively little? Unfortunately, it’s nearly always the former. And when given new business opportunities from customers in the lower-contributing “80%” category, many vendors decide to set aside any notion of service standards. They accept the new business and simply reduce the special treatment that would otherwise go to a more profitable customer. You might recognize this “special treatment” as responsiveness, or flexibility in processes.

So how can you apply this story to software vendor selection?

First, realize that technology must be appropriately implemented in order to be useful. Continuous technological advancements have allowed successive generations of software solutions to offer new features we never even knew we needed!  But often these technological advances are light years ahead of an organization’s ability to incorporate the advances and adopt new practices. So lesson one is look for a vendor that will not just sell you a product, but will help you determine what your company can effectively adopt and successfully use.

Second, consider that 80% of the companies in the market can probably fulfill most – if not all – of your desired specifications, and will likely meet all of your “must have” requirements.  So lesson two is find out who wants your business.  With one vendor, you could easily be just another customer…easily replaced. With another vendor, you could be one of the valued 20% producing 80% of their business. 

In today’s resource-strapped marketplace, vendor flexibility and responsiveness are becoming precious commodities.  Promises of superior customer service are in no short supply, but few companies are getting it right 100% of the time. As customers, we all want to fell valued and special.  Matching the size of your business need to a vendor who will be excited about having your business will help ensure you get the extra-special service you deserve.  Who knows, you might even get the roses and limo as a bonus!

Amy Barnes 
Director of Business Development 

Modernizing the Exit Interview: What are the Options?

Exit procedures are increasingly among the processes that companies are choosing to outsource and standardize, with outsourcing usually being the proposed change that receives the quickest buy-in from leaders and employees alike.  

More than anything else, putting the responsibility for data collection and reporting on the shoulders of a 3^rd party promises far better confidentiality for a departing employee. Decreasing the fear of burning bridges or stirring up trouble for remaining employees, outsourced data collection methods demonstrate to a departing employee that his or her company is truly committed to confidentiality; internal interview processes simply don’t demonstrate that same commitment – no matter how distant an interviewer may be from a departing employee’s role in the company. 

Standardizing, on the other hand, can imply a number of possible changes to a company’s exit protocol, and is more likely to invite mixed reactions. The less radical of these changes includes automating how an employee is contacted about participating in exit procedures. By integrating with a company’s HRIS, an automated exit process can instantly invite departing employees to schedule an exit interview or survey immediately after the employee is tagged by the system as a voluntary termination. This automation alone can save substantial amount of HR time (which would otherwise be spent tracking down and scheduling departing employees). So it’s generally an easy change to swallow.

But more substantial process changes – such as those that standardize the actual data collection method and content for the exit process –are often met with resistance. And this is when a careful examination of a company’s goals (and budget) for exit procedures need take place.

If an organization ultimately wants the ability to document and act upon trends, the questions that are posed to departing employees must be consistent and the responses that are elicited must be appropriately categorized. While this is easily achieved for some questions by providing pre-set response options (e.g., yes/no; agree/disagree, etc.), it is more difficult for open-ended questions. 

So what options exist for companies wanting to outsource their exit process and act upon information that can only be posed to employees in an open-ended format?

A first option is employ a third party to administer standardized, open-ended interview questions in an online survey. For example, Reliant’s survey program clients are given the option to receive qualitative reports of the responses to open-ended survey items, summarizing responses by themes. Depending upon the nature of the question (and so, the variety of responses) themes that persist year over year can then be make into standardized response options, further enhancing reporting capabilities.

A second option is to employ a third party to administer an online survey that includes both open-ended and closed questions (with standardized response options; e.g., a Likert agreement scale; strongly agree to strongly disagree). Using this combination of questions in an online survey allows for probing – such that individuals who respond to a particular closed-ended question in a specific way can be prompted to then answer a standardized open-ended question.  Because individuals are branched into standardized questions, their responses can be coded and examined for trend data over time. 

A third option is of course to engage a third party to administer open-ended questions in real-time interviews either online or over the phone.  Those conducting the interviews are often trained in interview procedures and can dig deeper into individual responses by offering unique probing questions. However, the risk of this method is that while it allows for probing questions, and so can provide a potentially richer set of information, responses that are provided to unique probes cannot be compared. Thus, trend information will only be captured by those items that have fairly consistent responses between departing employees, which to some extent negates the value of probing in the first place.

So, as is the case with most important decisions, choosing which option to go with ultimately boils down to what is trying to be accomplished by outsourcing your exit process, and how much you’re willing to spend in the name of that accomplishment. If the primary goal is to examine changes in responses over time, you need to consider options that allow you to compare responses in some meaningful way. But if the primary goal is to elicit detailed information on potentially highly unique reasons for why employees leave your organization, then you’ll want to look into options that best facilitate probing during live interviews.