I own a 5 year old  Acura with 48K miles on it and bought it from my local Acura dealer, which is also where I took the car to get work done. They provide ‘white glove’ service, every employee I have ever interacted with is very polite; they have free internet access in their waiting room; a shuttle service with a friendly driver; a well stocked fridge and nice coffee/tea. Yup, pricey service but a pleasure to deal with — until now.

My dealer wanted me to pay $1,500 for a new catalytic convertor when the old one was one week - count it - one week out of warranty.  (Convertor warranty was 5 year, 50K miles.)

I called the Acura dealer three times, the managers never got back to me. Finally took it in one more time, was told ‘not possible’, ‘have to pay the full amount’.

Found Hondar House thanks to the Car Talk site, they quoted me $1,000, a $500 savings. I would have been glad to have saved $500. However, the fact that the catalytic converter failed with so few miles on it (and that the Acura dealer didn’t want to give me ‘goodwill’ for the week out of warranty) bothered Frank. He asked if he could make a few calls for me. 

Frank called the Acura dealer’s parts manager, and did his magic. He got them to replace the part for free. It is not often that you find a business that will call a competitor and ask them to honor a warranty and refuse to take payment for any work done.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to save $1,500. Hondar House now has a customer for life.

In the next post, I’ll walk through some of the rookie mistakes that the dealer made. They did a good job until I had a problem, and they completely bombed it, and lost a loyal customer.

With many economies around the world sputtering, most of you are helping prop up balance sheets by slashing discretionary spending, renegotiating contracts and putting off purchases.In this kind of atmosphere, it is tempting just to make the necessary cuts and hope that you will be spared further scrutiny. Making cuts is always painful. I was part of one of the biggest IPOs in US history (at the time) followed by the dot-com crash and our eventual return to profitability with great margins. Just about anybody can manage during good times. It’s during tough times when the great stand out from the merely competent. Here are a few non-traditional ways you can stand out.

1. Love your clients and partners! Yup, with few exceptions, most of your clients and partners are under the same pressures you are. Everywhere they look, they, too, are being hit by reduced services and increased fees – from checking in baggage on planes, to rising food and oil costs, to cost-cutting pressures at work.This is a perfect time to pick up the phone and call or even visit – not just email – your clients and partners and see what you can do for them. Find out how they are being impacted during the downturn. Ask if there is anything you can do to help them succeed in their business. Revisit procedures and policies, offer training. Wouldn’t you like it if someone came to you and offered that kind of help? How many have?
    
2. One of the most overlooked ways to save money is to take a close look at your recurring costs and standing purchase orders. One of my clients just saved over $250,000 a year in maintenance fees. How? They had inherited a contract from another department, but until they made the time to look at it, they didn’t realize they were paying for equipment and software that hadn’t been on the books for two years. Think about it – where else can you get that kind of savings without significant pain?
    
3. Be ready for good times. The larger your organization, the more likely ‘use it or lose it’ money will become available at the end of your fiscal year. These funds must be used quickly and will be awarded to those who are prepared. Have you created a prioritized list of what you want and need? Reach out to your suppliers and partners. Give them a heads-up so they’re ready to help when resources free up. Savvy clients and prospects have already reached out to me this way, and they will get a priority in scheduling.
    
4. One final note: Think big, think bold. If you have been running a support center for many years, you’re probably already running a pretty tight ship. Have you reached a wall in terms of efficiency and productivity gains? Well, this is the perfect time to start planning and implementing dramatic changes in the way you do support. Frankly, most support centers are little more than optimized break-fix centers. What an incredible waste of time for our customers – and a morale-killer for our staffs. Why isn’t most of our time spent working with customers to make them more successful in their business? That’s how to deliver real value.During tough times like these, senior management often looks for dramatic change. Some start with changes to the corporate culture, and take time to get used to. For example, consider getting rid of Level 1/2/3 support models and embracing Savvy Support. This conversion takes time, but pays off in a big way.

There you have it. Quick tips to help you stand out during tough times.

I’ll let you know how this goes.

The first keynote will be by Marlene Bessette, VP Strategy and Customer Loyalty, Xerox. “Your ideal customers aren’t just satisfied—they become evangelists for your company.” Marlene spoke at one of our First Wednesday Group roundtable meetings and she was a huge hit with her depth of knowledge and passion for the subject.

The second keynote will be by Tina Taylor, VP Global Customer Care, GE Fanuc
By using Net Promoter “willingness to recommend” scores, GE has developed a continuous improvement process for support.

Sign up for the retreat now - contact me for a $50 discount code per person.

One of the companies is a pleasure to deal with - AMEX - one call takes care of it all. In and out in about 30 seconds. My other credit card company has me answer multiple questions, one of which invariably involves having my payment history in front of me. Not very user friendly particularly when I’m calling from an airport on my way out.

Needless to say, I tend to use my AMEX more than any other card particularly while traveling abroad.

This tension is typical between customer support/service folks in a company and security folks.  So, in your organization, do you strike a balance that puts the customer’s needs first or do you make 99.9% of the people jump through hoops to catch the 0.1% of potential crooks?

As you walk in, there are pictures of staff working that day with their names and areas of specialization.  You can ask to speak with specific people instead of having to queue up to conduct transations with the ‘next available teller’. On the left, there are ATMs with new technologies - one where you can drop in coins without pre-counting them, and it is automatically counted and deposited into your account; another with fingerprint recognition etc. On the right, there are a rotating set of high end merchants - on my trip, it was a travel related theme with Thomas Cook (the travel agency) who had enticing brochures on exotic locales and a representative on hand, along with a high end Italian designer company selling bags, briefcases and assorted travel goodies.

Just beyond this area, you have services (like loans, mortgages etc.) that are bundled into tangible products - something you can touch and feel, and have to buy for a modest price. (You get back more than what you pay for in savings inside the box.)

At the back of the branch is a stylish upmarket cafe, with big screen flat panel TVs and free internet connectivity (there is even a flat screen tv built into the bar surface complete with embedded keyboard). There is a free (staffed) daycare and customizable meeting rooms all with the latest technology. It is even pet friendly.

This ‘branch of the future’ caters well for both the self service crowd as well as the ‘high touch’ crowd, making it a far more personalized and pleasurable experience - indeed a destination if the number of people who walked in were any indication.

If you are in Berlin, you should go see it!

Another presentation was from the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormon Church). Interesting factoid - the average age of their online knowledge base volunteers is 70!

The Euro Cup is going on, and it is wonderful to watch different communities celebrate as they win.

Major philosophical differences exist between managers who run large-scale operations - ones with a massive number of incoming calls - and operations with a lower volume of quite complex calls.

One big disparity revolves around metrics. High volume support centers generally concentrate on metrics that show how smoothly their operations are running. These managers know that slight changes in efficiency make a significant difference in a unit’s profitability. The folks running complex support centers, on the other hand, tend to dismiss Six Sigma and focus on things like customer satisfaction or loyalty.

Is there a happy middle ground?

I spoke recently with Geetha Panda, Hewlett-Packard’s worldwide head for service delivery excellence. She explained a pre-emptive escalation model they’ve developed in their Bangalore service delivery center. The model was based on a study of the relationship between output metrics (customer SLAs and KPIs) and the input metrics that directly or indirectly affect them.

This derives from Six Sigma, in which you focus on the things that you have control over (e.g., staff availability), and ignore the things that you don’t (e.g., customer satisfaction). By ensuring a good end-to-end understanding of the implications of decisions made along the way, a strong alignment is created. This reduces variation and unpredictability, which in turn helps ensure that the outcomes are more likely to be statistically “in control.”

Geetha cited one example of how this approach has transformed HP’s Bangalore center. They took over an exceptionally high-profile, at-risk account from a native English-speaking center, and successfully converted them into fans again. She credits their pre-emptive escalation model for this win. In fact, the model has been so successful that HP is now extending it to other centers around the world.

As I reflected on my conversation with Geetha, I wondered why many in the support world - especially those who run lower volume, high complexity support centers - tend to dismiss Six Sigma. I would guess it’s the apparent focus on process and metrics to the exclusion of everything else. Think about it. Complex technical support inherently has a “people first, process second, technology third” hierarchy. Six Sigma’s priorities seem to be process first, followed by people and then technology.

But is that really true? A careful analysis of Six Sigma shows it’s not. In fact, one of its key tenets is gathering input and suggestions from those actually doing the work.

Are you successfully using any aspects of Six Sigma in your support organization? Let me know. I’m particularly interested in lower-volume, high-complexity support organizations using Six Sigma.