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Ideas, tips and techniques for new generation selling and customer support.
Tag Archives: retail
2010
Fight Back Against Online Merchants: Offer Online Customer Service in a 24/7 World
In a 24/7 world, how can brick-and-mortar businesses compete with “always open” online merchants? By offering everything they can do online.
- 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.
Filed under: appointment scheduling software, customer service
Tagged: 24/7 business, always on business, appointment scheduler improve customer service, appointment scheduling, appointment scheduling software, customer care, customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer service options, efficiency, improve customer service, online scheduling, retail
2009
The Benefits of Online Scheduling Software for the Retail Industry
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Smart retailers differentiate themselves with superior customer service. Storefront “greeters” and personal shoppers help; here are some real-life examples of the unique blend of superior customer service and cost-saving offered by online appointment scheduling:
Filed under: appointment reminder, appointment scheduling software, customer retention
Tagged: appointment scheduler improve customer service, appointment scheduling, appointment scheduling software, customer care, customer experience, customer loyalty, customer retention, customer satisfaction, customer service, efficiency, retail
2009
MIT analyst warns retailers against “queue rage”
MIT's "Dr. Queue" (Photo: Tim Gray, Boston Globe)
The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine recently interviewed MIT professor Dick Larson, a.k.a. “Dr. Queue.” The piece includes tips for both consumers waiting in line, and for retailers bracing for the busiest shopping time of the year.
For the retailer, there were results that don’t surprise us a bit:
In an informal poll, Larson found half of people polled reported they would not return to a store because of a bad experience waiting in line. He even notes that long, unpleasant lines have a greater impact on consumer behavior than low prices.
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2009
Five Growing Markets For Appointment Scheduling Software
I like having an appointment, and I hate waiting. Both my doctor’s office and day spa get this and thus have appointment scheduling software to serve and satisfy customers like me.
However, such software is also being used in other markets on an increasing scale. Here’s a look at five vertical markets that are rapidly adopting appointment scheduling, and why appointment scheduling software makes sense for them:
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2009
Making it through the downdraft, part 3: customer service matters.
Got an email today from MITSloan Management Review, and a great item caught my attention as I browsed through their site. It’s a video interview with Prof. Martin Roth, of the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business, by the Wall Street Journal’s Jennifer Merritt.
Roth reviews strategies companies use in a downturn, including cutting quality and customer service, and observes:
“They backfire because they’re really, in the end, not meeting customer expectations. Companies have to remember that although times are tough, and customers are concerned about their wallets, and companies are concerned about their budgets, markets continue to be competitive, and customers continue to have lots of choices of different products and services in the market.
“So … when companies decide to cut back on customer service, what may once have been a key differentiator for them brings them down to a parity level, or perhaps even worse. … It becomes much more difficult to re-convince customers that they should pay a premium.”
I found myself thinking “I hope he brings it home with a real-world example.” He did:
“Circuit City… fell drastically behind Best Buy in customer service while Best Buy was making important investments, putting support systems in place for staff…”
I know it’s a tough call for management, balancing cost controls against long-term impact. We face it too: we’re being prudent, but we’re not cutting back on keeping our customers happy. There will be an end to this downdraft, and we’re not letting anyone steal a march on us.
This is a time for companies to demonstrate that they know what their value is, not gasp for air – and certainly not make their customers gasp for air.
p.s. This is the coolest video platform I’ve ever seen: it includes subtitles so you can mute it and “listen” without disturbing your neighbors. In English or Spanish.
2009
Customer Experience has “direct link with loyalty”
Good news, bad news:
- In a new report (abstract), Forrester Research now says customer experience has a “direct link with loyalty.” That’s good: today you need all the loyalty you can get, and if your competitor slips up through clumsy cost-cutting, it’s your opening to acquire their frustrated abusees.
- But Forrester also says customer experience is “in its adolescence”: players are awkwardly stumbling around, trying to find their power. And that’s not based on customer complaints: that’s from a self-test!
As we grind into the gritty part of the slowdown, businesses who lack genuine buoyancy are sinking, and only the ones with substantial value are bobbing above water:
- Sinking: Players who, like GM, depended on unsustainable consumer trends (the preference for SUVs)
- Swimming: Players like Best Buy, legendary for its focus on customer experience. Even in the downdraft of Q4 2008, they earned $570 million. Half a billion! And that’s despite a decline in comparable store sales (Best Buy’s version of same store sales).
When somebody tries to do business with you, it’s a precious moment. Give them a good experience. Tips from the “no lines, no waiting” perspective:
- Customer experience matters.
- When someone wants to do business, don’t make them wait.
- When somebody is a customer, keep ‘em. Make ‘em love you.
Food for thought: some real-world case studies of how TimeTrade users in many industries are doing this with appointment scheduling, pre- and post-acquisition, often as part of a larger customer experience strategy.
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: appointment scheduling, customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer service, downturn, economy, retail, waiting
2009
A Key to Customer Service: Listening (and Hearing)
To make a relationship sustainable, vendors and customers need to be decent partners. Customers can’t expect everything to be free, but at the same time, vendors need to hear what customers are saying, and let customers know they’re listening.
Whatever the outcome on any particular incident, you can tell whether someone’s listening or stonewalling. I just ran across a post that illustrates this perfectly. Not surprisingly, it’s Apple.
Advertising / new-media blogger Bhatnaturally (his surname is Bhat – the blog title reads “But naturally”) has been an Apple customer for ten years, and he’s got a problem: the screen on his 2006 MacBook has gone bad. In his post What we can learn from Apple customer service, he writes about the frustration of what it’ll cost him and his experience trying to reach someone who’ll listen to his plea for an exception.
Throughout, he makes clear that he knows it’s out of warranty and that Apple already made an exception for him in the past. What makes all the difference to him is that through persistence he was able to reach a senior level person who listened. And he concludes:
On hard facts, I am not entitled to – I neither have extended warranty nor AppleCare Protection Plan. But simply entertaining a call of this nature speaks volumes about their attitude to customer care. I doubt if other brands in the same category will even bother. I may end up living with a faulty display screen but my image of Apple’s service has not been dented severely.
We at TimeTrade have a live incident underway in which someone had a real problem because a planned feature doesn’t exist yet. More about this in a future post. All I can say is, we believe in listening.
p.s. How not to listen: respond to critics the way Sarah Lacey did at SXSW last year, after her fiasco of an interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. 
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: customer experience, customer service, retail
2009
Sprint boosts customer service via online appointment scheduling
As we noted last week, Sprint picked up on Apple’s Genius Bar idea and has been exploiting convenient web self-service appointment scheduling to improve customer satisfaction.
A new story Extended Coverage Area, just out today in Stores magazine, gives additional details that we didn’t realize were public. Excerpts:
- Sprint’s online appointment platform from TimeTrade Systems is helping to transform the company’s stores from product-oriented to customer-oriented.
- If the call center representative can’t diagnose the defect over the phone, he can use the system to make a store appointment for the customer or recommend the customer go to the website and make an appointment himself.
- The system bases appointments on the availability of store employees and on the consumer’s reason for visiting, which can include making a purchase, having a device repaired or receiving instruction in using a phone or service. The customer’s needs determine which employee to assign — a salesperson or technician — and how much time to allot for the appointment.
- Dixon concurs. “We got it implemented faster…than any system I’ve ever seen implemented at Sprint. We were able to get it up and running pretty flawlessly right out of the gate.” [Kim Dixon, Sprint's senior vice president of consumer sales]
- Customer surveys show that all of these measures have boosted the company’s image, Dixon says. The number of customers categorizing themselves as being “extremely satisfied” rose from 80 percent in early 2008 to 90 percent this year. “We are really moving the needle in the stores, which is what we hoped,” Dixon says.
- These and other improvements have also helped Sprint raise its results 50% between August and February in a J.D. Power satisfaction study.
Congratulations to Sprint for their vigorous approach to customer satisfaction — and especially for the great results they’ve already racked up. There is real value in making it easier for customers to get what you’re offering, and this is a great case in point.
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: appointment scheduling, customer experience, customer satisfaction, retail
2009
Online appointment scheduling: Sprint picks up on Genius Bar idea to boost customer satisfaction
In my first post here I said It’s RUDE to make people wait. And costly. People hate to wait. That story was about government, where the people in line don’t have much choice. But in retail, impatient people vote with their feet, and in today’s economy, who can afford that?
Case in point: Sprint Nextel. Committed to
customer satisfaction, in September they
announced a new initiative called Ready Now.
It’s all about great service:
“Imagine this: You buy a new wireless phone with all the latest, high-tech applications, and then someone actually sits with you and helps you unlock its potential … Today, it’s real. Today, Sprint launches Ready Now, a revolution in the wireless retail experience.”
CNet’s Nicole Lee noted that they were adopting a well-known best practice: “Sprint’s Ready Now customer-service bent is similar to Apple’s Genius Bar,where customers can get help with their Apple products.” That’s the gold standard; the Genius Bar is legendary for customer satisfaction.
But what good is it to offer great service, then annoy people by making them wait for it?
Apple handles this with a homegrown online appointment system that offers Genius Bar appointments with no wait. Smart. For quicker time-to-benefit, Sprint took TimeTrade’s off-the-shelf system. Within months of first having the idea, they were able to announce:
“Customers have a choice of sitting down with a Sprint retail associate while in the store, or they can make an appointment for a later time. … [They can] schedule appointments either in the store, or online … Customers can visit www.sprint.com/readynow to schedule an appointment.”
That was September 9, 2008. Is it producing street-level results? February 4, 2009:
“A customer satisfaction study by J.D. Power & Associates shows Sprint’s customer service has quickly closed the gap within the industry by 50% versus August. In December, satisfaction of ‘very and extremely satisfied’ topped an all time high of 93 percent for customers that experienced Ready Now.”
Next time you’re in line at your cell phone store, ask yourself: why am I waiting?? Why don’t these guys have online appointment systems? Maybe they just don’t care as much as Apple and Sprint.
Related news item, 2/23/09: Sprint Simplifies the Customer Experience to Build Loyalty (1to1media.com, Peppers & Rogers Group)
Filed under: appointment scheduling, online scheduling
Tagged: customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer service, economy, retail, waiting
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