Comments for The Verghis Group

Comment on Verghis View April ’08 – No more (support) Tiers: Savvy Support by Tiers Or No Tiers? | Enterprise Software Customer Support

Tiers Or No Tiers? | Enterprise Software Customer Support — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:28:45 +0000

[...] for eliminating tiers in support has been made by quite a few support industry members, here is one example, by Phil [...]

Comment on Can slowing down service improve ratings? by Phil Verghis

Phil Verghis — Tue, 10 May 2011 17:26:19 +0000

Hi Don,

It is not off-topic at all. I think that too few companies encourage their support teams to keep their customers updated. You are absolutely correct in that the failure to do this is a major cause of customer dis-satisfaction.

Having said that, I believe this gives us an opportunity to be more transparent in our response. Not just a ‘being working on message’ but think ‘it has now reached the engineering team. X has it assigned to her queue.’ etc. And make it part of of X’s job to provide the status change updates as it rolls through her queue until the process is completed.

After all, FedEx and UPS as well as consumer companies like Dominos Pizza have conditioned customers to expect more transparency as our orders traverse their system. It is about time we changed too.

Keep up the good fight Don, and see you at another First Wednesday Group meeting soon.

Comment on Can slowing down service improve ratings? by Don Frye

Don Frye — Tue, 10 May 2011 16:45:15 +0000

Thanks for sharing, Phil — not to take off-topic, but I immediately wondered if this research could translate toward more traditional technical support interactions. We often experience unhappy customers simply because they thought they had been dropped/forgotten/abandoned. In some ways, we encourage a form of “labor illusion” by having technical support engineers contact customers on a periodic basis while there is an open issue. While this seems like an obvious model, I find that without encouraging our support folks to let customers know “we haven’t forgotten about you, and we are still looking into your problem”, we run the risk that by default we are establishing a lack of operational transparency…and that equates to customer dissatisfaction, even if behind the scenes we have escalated and involved a lot of resources to provide a quality resolution.

– Don

Comment on Zen and the art of aircraft engine maintenance by don

don — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:55:16 +0000

interesting post, thank you for it.

Comment on The Butterfly Effect – Part 2 by Carlos

Carlos — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:00:37 +0000

Really ‘Butterfly Effect’ is true. As you’ve seen, small errors can balloon out of control. Smash the barriers between departments, particularly when there is a crisis. but main thing is that how much better the crisis might have been handled if there had been open communication among manufacturing, shipping and customer support.

Comment on White glove service – or trusted advisor – a tale of $1,500 saved (Part II) by lara

lara — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:14:08 +0000

ok…I’ve read your blog among many others you have written and this is the conclusion I have come to. Looks like its your job to go places and examine their “customer service”. I have to say that I find you to be pretty harsh. People will bump into obstacles, nowhere is perfect. Have you seen the economy? The struggles, the changes, the way things are getting tougher and tougher? You think that the peple at that dealerships intention was to disappoint you? And with one bad experiece you slam them. I owned a toyota and had a bad experience before and went back and was surprised to see how they did everything they possibly could not to disappoint me the second time around. I gave a chance. You just slammed your dealer! I bet you were just as nasty on their surveys if they gave you one. They are trying to make a living too. It makes me so mad to see people who live in a fairy world. Reality buddy! Shit happens! You want to talk about imperfection? You have a lot of typing errors on your blogs. How unprofessional!

Comment on Boston area Voice of the Customer retreat – Oct 7 by Phil Verghis

Phil Verghis — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:51:57 +0000

Hi,

Honestly I don’t, which is the reason we started this conference here in Boston. Drop me a line directly and let me know if you are in internal support, external support or some other group (professional services, marketing etc.). I may be able to guide you better then.

Comment on 3 continents, 10 flights in 11 days by Phil Verghis

Phil Verghis — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:47:47 +0000

Bangalore’s airport is quite nice and a lovely change from the old, crowded airport. There are a lot of shops, and locals (including the pilot of a flight I was on, and was chatting with after we landed) feel that it is already going to be too small.

Hyderabad’s airport is gorgeous, and spacious. I like it better than Bangalore. I’ll upload some pictures when I return home. I did see that Pizza Hut has a ‘fiery chicken’ option, with green chillies on it. Wish they would bring it in the US.

Comment on Boston area Voice of the Customer retreat – Oct 7 by Fanuc

Fanuc — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:18:10 +0000

This is something i would be very interested in. Do you know of anything similar running in the UK or Europe?

Thanks in advance

Comment on Q110 – Deutsche Bank’s ‘Branch of the Future’ by Jim

Jim — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:18:34 +0000

Hi Phil! Remember the Betty Daze in the basement of Thompson Hall? I was thinking of you the other day when reading about the OS/2 wars. – Jim