Case 1: wrong shipment, late, from a company from whom his wife has often bought. Worse: no calls returned.

Case 2: Capital One, the credit card company with a huge ad budget, not returning calls about adding more cards! In Johnson’s words, “I’d be more productive trying to hoist the goods from Fort Knox.” What’s in your to-do list, Capital One?

Commenters drive home the takeaways. Richard Turcott, Chief Marketing Officer of Ratepoint, says

Healthy businesses focus on delivering a great experience to their customers, an experience that their customers will be delighted with and want to talk about. Marketing, support and product quality all influence customer experience…

And commenter Tim Orr adds

This is exactly what Emerson meant when he said, “What you are shouts so loudly I cannot hear what you say.” …Marketing and branding are an inside job.

Hey, marketing execs: is bad service slashing the results of your outreach, while you get blamed?

(p.s. For a sweet postscript, three weeks later Johnson notes that the opposite happened when his wife’s bracelet broke. Nice.)

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine RDS032354

“Many restaurants are using devices like alert pages, but those are limiting to patrons,” said Josh Bob, founder and president, Textaurant.  “You really can’t go far from the restaurant.  Essentially, your time spent waiting for your table is lost, since you can’t spend it as you wish.  What business wants to waste their customers’ time?”

Overly long waiting times are not just an issue for large chain restaurants.  Even the small, trendy local restaurant will experience waiting times of more than 30 minutes.  And as a report from Cornell’s Center for Hospitality Research notes, customers “take a dim view of waiting” for a table.

The study recommends restaurants “that continue with seating from a first-come, first-served waitlist should consider ways to empower guests…”  One way to do that is a beeper service like Textaurant, or for other business, appointment scheduling from TimeTrade.

“Customers want more freedom and flexibility,” continues Bob.  “Combine that with the fact that 98% of phones sold today have texting capabilities, and it’s a natural match for restaurants that want to change how they handle customers waiting for tables.  Once we add voice mail and email capability to the system, we’ll have something that everyone with a mobile phone can use.”

Textaurant took an existing, aggravating and stressful business problem and applied an innovative solution to enhancing customer service.  And, it’s not just about improving customer service; it’s also about improving the bottom line.  According to Bob, restaurants using Textaurant’s service are seeing reductions in no-shows for reservations and decreases in customers opting to not wait for a table.

The Cornell study claims “anything that can be done to reduce perceived waiting time [regardless of industry] should result in an increase in customer satisfaction.”  Sounds like a great business reason to innovate customer waiting processes and procedures.   Just like Textaurant.

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine TT0701816

For the past two years businesses have dug in, deepened the trenches, reduced staff and cut costs to the bone. Now, in 2010, economic progress reports suggest the time is coming to start building and growing again.

But you don’t need to hire new employees or add a lot of costly equipment to turn these resolutions into realities. Every one of them has been attained by real companies using web-based appointment scheduling software. Read their stories in our case study library, and then make some resolutions for your own business in 2010.

Rich Silverman
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Public domain Image by Ivan Akira courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Paco Underhill, consultant and author of the book Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, notes that 90 seconds is the limit to how long a customer accurately perceives the duration of his wait in a line. After 90 seconds, perception goes off track, and two minutes seems like three and three minutes seems like five.

At a certain point, Underhill says, waiting will be seen as a separate activity rather than part of a process, such as making an appointment.  Underhill notes simply: 90 seconds or fewer = success. More than 90 seconds = not success.

People online have an even shorter attention span – about 4 seconds.  Picture a potential customer waiting for a page to load on a website.  After four seconds, according to research conducted by web consultants Akamai and Jupiter Research, customers start to leave a slow website.  The only things consumers like less than waiting are high product prices and expensive shipping.

According to a post in callcentermanagement.com, call center operators shouldn’t concern themselves with how long people will wait before they hang up the phone when trying, for example, to make an appointment.  It is far more important, according to the site, to track and manage first call resolution – the percentage of callers taken care of with just one call.

What lesson can we draw from all this?  The key to customer satisfaction – whether on the phone, on line, or in line, is to take care of them fast and get it right the first time.

Rich Silverman
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine TEMP2341

Customers want convenience: a quick process to book an appointment that matches their schedule.

Service providers want bookings, as many as possible. But the busier you get, the harder it is to take time to take calls.

Self-service appointment scheduling software easily enhances customer service. The result? Happier customers and more efficient and effective customer service.

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine PAA161000019

Here are some top benefits for personal service providers:

• Expanded hours for scheduling appointments. Most salons are open five days a week; three to four weekdays and one to two weekend days. Clients who call on a closed day to schedule an appointment will need to call back on a day when the business is open. Loyal customers will. New customers may just call another salon. With appointment scheduling software, clients can go online whenever convenient for them, and book their appointments.
• Fewer missed appointments. When clients miss appointments, businesses lose revenue. With scheduling software, the beauty salon can automatically set up appointment reminder emails.
• Greater efficiency = more clients serviced. Some personal services require a set block of time. For example, a massage is usually 60 or 90 minutes. Other services, such as hair coloring, can vary in time based on the client’s requirements, individual practitioner and number of concurrent appointments. With a scheduling software solution in place, the salon owner can get information on average times for appointments by various factors (day, stylist, etc.) and use that information to maximize the number of appointments per day.

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine FAN2034838

Recent posts on consultant High Scalability.com’s website and that of software company 37Signals describe interviews with Amazon.com’s Chief Technical Officer and the writings of early company employees on the secrets of the company’s success.

Amazon.com has embraced technology – that great multiplier of all things good and bad – as a way to provide the best possible experience for its customers.   Here are some of the things the company does to use that technology to redefine that customer experience:

• Software developers spend time with customer service so they understand what customers want.
• If you build it, you run it. That means direct contact with customers.
• Measure. Test. Change. Repeat. Don’t guess about something if you can measure it.
• Your customers will tell you what they do and don’t like. Listen to them.
• Innovation comes from the bottom. People closest to a problem are the best ones to solve it.
• Keep groups small and empower them to solve problems as they see fit.
• Stuff fails.  Learn to fix it when it does.

In an interview posted on GoodExperience.com, Maryam Mohit, Amazon’s V.P. Of Site Development notes that passion about customer service flows through everyone’s veins at Amazon.com.  When asked for the secret of Amazon’s success, she replied “I wish I knew.  I do think that the relentless focus on creating a great experience has to be part of it.  It’s not just a great experience on the website, because we think about it as a 360 degree experience, which includes what happens after you click to order.  What’s the experience of waiting for the order to arrive, of getting the box, what happens if something goes wrong?  Each of those is part of the customer experience.”

Rich Silverman
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine RDS106306

• A national portrait studio chain offers online appointment scheduling.  Result: more than 20% of their business comes in while they’re closed. (That’s a 25% increase. What would you do to boost business 25%??)
• Sprint uses TimeTrade to let you self-schedule advanced support for your smartphone, 24/7. Imagine: no more queues – no lines, no waiting!
• Sonora Quest lets patients schedule quick appointments for blood tests etc. Result: 22,000 people a month self-schedule. They all get seen within five minutes – and think how much staff time would be needed to schedule those appointments manually.

24/7 online appointment scheduling provides dual benefits.

• Broaden your customer base by being accessible when you’re closed. Fill appointments and increase revenue without hiring additional staff or paying overtime.
• And customers can tackle their to-dos when it’s convenient, not just when the business is open. Great customer service!

Few brick-and-mortar businesses are open round the clock; online retailers are. This “digital divide” in service hours can be a competitive problem, but it’s possible to fight back, closing the deal when 9–5 businesses are closed.

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine TT0600456

In both 2005 and 2006, Mercedes ranked #8 in the same survey, due in part to poor survey results from both Consumer Reports and J.D. Power.  According to Automotive Fleet.com, Mercedes launched a worldwide initiative three years ago aimed at improving customer satisfaction.   The car maker made a concerted effort to improve the quality of its cars, implementing an “intensive, continual and long-term” training program for employees.   To date more than 150,000 Mercedes service-department employees have been through the training.  The company climbed to #6 in 2007, #4 in 2008 and finally to its current #1 spot.

For a manufacturer, quality or resale value may be the key this year, price or dealer incentives the next.   But for any service-based business, the convenience, speed and ease with which customers can use a company will always be of paramount importance.

Rich Silverman
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine U23209699

• Lifetouch Portrait Studios, which operates more than 700 Target and JCPenney photography studios, surveyed customers and found ease of online scheduling is the #1 guest “satisfier” for their business.
• Another international portrait studio chain, with 3,100 retail locations, used online scheduling to reduce costly call volumes by 23%.
• Ritz Camera has realized a significant drop in customer no-shows, which they attribute to online appointment scheduling with automated appointment confirmations.
• Petco, which offers pet grooming services in addition to products, offers customers online appointment scheduling, enabling the pet grooming specialists to focus on customer service, not administrative scheduling.
• David’s Bridal chose online scheduling software to smooth traffic at peak service times.
• Janovic, a subsidiary of Benjamin Moore, provides in-home custom window treatments.  With online scheduling software, Janovic has streamlined the scheduling process and allows the company to better track the locations of their installers.

These retailers demonstrate the significant benefits of online appointment scheduling software. And they’re all TimeTrade customers. For more information, see our customers page and our case studies.

The biggest benefit of all could be repeat business from happy, satisfied customers.

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine AM11021008098