Customer Service Expectations - The "Whatever it takes / Spare No Expense" option

The problem with customer service is not a new one. It's about balancing between serving a lot of people a little, or dropping everything to serve a few people a lot.

Getting a lot of benefit for a lot of people for not so much money isn't particularly difficult. In the chart on the left, for example, (a) represents the cost of good signage at the airport, or clearly written directions on the prescription bottle or a bit of training for your staff. It pays off. Pay a little bit and you help a lot of people to avoid hassles. The utility per person isn't huge, but you can help a lot of people at once.

(b) is the higher cost of a bit of direct intervention. This is the cost of a call center or a toll free number or an information desk. You're paying more, you're helping fewer people, but you're helping them a lot.

(c) is where it gets nuts. (c) is where we are expected to spare no expense, where the CEO has to get involved because it's a journalist who's upset, or where we're busy airlifting a new unit out to a super angry customer. The cost is very high, the systems fall apart and only one person benefits.

Of course, if you're that one person, you think it's not only fair, but appropriate and right.

This "spare no expense" mantra is extremely difficult to avoid, because in any given situation, when the resources are available, your inclination is to say, "make the problem go away, spend the money!"

It's certainly possible to build a brand without going to (c) (witness the way Google almost never gets embroiled in special cases or even answers the phone--I know that they're certainly not eager to fix my imap problems), but once you've trained your customers that (c) is an option, it's awfully hard to scale back.

The reason we get trapped by (c) is that, "I'm doing the best I can" is always much easier than, "we need to be disciplined and help more people, even if that means that some special cases will fall through the cracks. The internet makes this even more difficult because people who fall through the cracks are able to amplify their complaints ever louder.

The way around it, I think, is to set expectations early and often. If you're going to give me your phone number, you better answer it. If you're going to offer a warranty, you better honor it. If you position yourself as a company with real people eager to make every single person happy--you better deliver.

No matter what, you should decide. In advance. How much do you want to spend on ad hoc emergencies, how much do you want to reserve on design and helping the masses improve their experience?

Link

Used / Pre-owned / Experienced Automobiles?

So - the used car business looks appealing. There seems to be so many ways to be "better" than the next guy. Your instincts for retailing are good. You can sell. You know how to manage the environment. Stop!

You've got half the picture in view - perhaps less than half. The most difficult part of this business is buying inventory. Oh yea - it is. Don't kid yourself. This is not for the amateur. You'll be eaten and swallowed quickly. If you're an independent (no franchise) and even if your new car franchise does light volume, you really can't trade your way to good inventory. You have to find it to buy it. You have to compete with others.

The talent for selling is important but buying is where you make money. Buying is at least half the battle. The strategies, the skills, the rigor and talent needed to be a pro are rarer and more valuable than you might think. Some may argue that this isn't the case but they would be wrong.

So - if you want to "do used", be or get a professional buyer.

Ya - scalable thoughts perhaps? Think about it

Lessons from very tiny businesses

1. Go where your customers are.

Jacquelyne runs a tiny juice company called Chakwave. I met her in Los Angeles, standing next to an organic lunch truck. Like the little birds that clean the teeth of the hippo, there's synergy here. The kind of person that visits the truck for lunch is the sort of person that would happily pay for something as wonderfully weird as her juice. And the truck owners benefit from the rolling festival farmer's market feel that comes from having a synergistic partner set up on a bridge table right next door.

2. Be micro-focused and the search engines will find you.

My friend Patti Jo is an extraordinary teacher and tutor. Her new business, The Scarsdale Tutor doesn't need many clients in order to be successful. This permits her to focus obsessively and that gets rewarded with front page results on Google. Not because she's tried to manipulate the seo (she hasn't) but because this is exactly the page you'd hope to find if you typed "scarsdale tutor" into a search engine. Could she do this nationwide? Of course not. But she doesn't want to or need to. Living on the long tail can be profitable.

3. Outlast the competition.

I was amazed at all the empty storefronts I saw in LA on my last visit. On one particular block, three or four of the ten lunch places were shut down. And the others? Doing great. That's because the remaining office workers who used to eat lunch at the shuttered places had to eat somewhere, and so the survivors watched their business grow. A war of attrition is never pretty, but if you're smart about overhead and scale, you'll win it.

4. Leverage.

Rick Toone runs a tiny guitar-making operation. His lack of scale makes it easy for him to share. When others start using his designs, he doesn't suffer (he can't make any more guitars than he already is) he benefits, because as the originator of the design, his originals become more coveted, not less valuable. He leverages his insight and shares it as a free marketing device.

5. Respond.

This is the single biggest advantage you have over the big guys. Not only are you in charge, you also answer the phone and read your email and man the desk and set the prices.