The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [27]
This simple workshop is the first thing I do as an outside consultant when I go in to improve a company. For many of them, it has opened the door to creating lasting positive change. Here’s an example.
Fixing 18 Ten-Year-Old Customer Service Problems in Two Hours Flat
Recently, I sat 20 employees of a publishing company down to do their first workshop. I asked this question: “What are the things standing in the way of this being a much better company?” We put the list up on the whiteboard and then prioritized it. One of the obstacles was that there were “too many inconsistencies in how the customer ser vice people handle complaints.” So we took that single statement and focused the next workshop on it, asking folks to list examples of where this occurred. There were 18 distinct inconsistencies noted by the staff where this company had never bothered to create standard procedures or policies by which people could operate. As a result, many of these 18 issues appeared hundreds of times during a given year and most of them ended up being dealt with by the president himself. Yet, like most presidents, he was so busy that he never stopped to create permanent solutions. This was partly because he couldn’t immediately and easily think of what those solutions might be. Again, here is a case where the president believed he had to solve all the problems. You don’t. Have a meeting with the people dealing directly with the problems and simply ask for solutions.
So I gathered the staff into a room and, in one hour, we collectively solved nine of the eighteen issues. The following week we solved the other nine. Most of these issues simply needed to be addressed one time with the president in the room. In some cases, we created form letters that dealt with the problem. In other cases, we put a section on the Web site that listed standard answers to some of the issues that arose. This particular publishing company had made some choices in its editorial content that often brought about complaints from parents who purchased products for their children. When customers complained, the customer ser vice rep would then say: “Thank you for bringing this up. You are not the first one to do so, and we appreciate your input [honor the customer]. We’ve addressed this specifically and I’m going to send you a link to our Web site where you can read our perspective on this issue. If after reading that, you are still not satisfied, please get back in touch with me. Issues that go beyond our company policies are addressed quarterly by our president. So if you do not feel satisfied by how we address this issue, please let us know.”
On the Web site, the issue was addressed thoroughly with compelling copy that explained why the company operated the way it did. Now, instead of the president dealing with some of these issues daily, he would only need a quarterly meeting to look at cases where someone was not satisfied with the company’s policy or position.
The other thing we did was to develop a hierarchy of solutions the customer ser vice reps could offer to keep the customer happy. In other words, each rep was authorized to offer a solution. If the customer was still unhappy, the rep could offer another solution. If the customer was still unhappy, the rep could even offer a third solution. This procedure empowered the customer ser vice people with levels of actions they could take before needing to involve a supervisor.
It is amazing to think that this company had labored under so many basic problems for a decade and we solved them within two hours using focus and communication in a workshop-style meeting.
Imagine if you planned, tested, and established policies for every