Several times last night I was awakened by lightning and thunder. When I woke up this morning, I realized the result of the storms was that our cable internet was out of service. I knew I needed to call Bright House, our cable provider, to get the situation figured out but I could not bring myself to pick up the phone. From my past experiences with them…I would wait not minutes but quarters of hours, they would work with me on my problem but would understand less than I did, and only sometimes would the issue be resolved. Having this in the back of my mind, I still had no choice but to make the call.
I was actually pretty quickly connected to a live person. He did have a strange accent which worried me as many times I have had to repeat myself to call centers overseas that could not understand what I was saying. This guy, Andrew, seemed to have a pretty good command of the language. He walked me through turning off the modem (which didn’t fix it), through a few other simple steps, and finally to unplugging the router. This apparently reset it and the internet came back on. This was not the impressive part though. What impressed me was the response after that. Andrew quickly said, “Great! Let’s review the steps we took.” He then walked me through a brief review and referred me to an online resource that I could print and keep near my computer if this happened again, saving me a phone call. What a treat! He was not only helping me, but he was teaching me! The benefit to me was that I felt empowered as a customer.
Was this only Andrew’s standard protocol after an issue was resolved? I doubt it. My guess is that Bright House has had some focus groups with customers and learned that this may either cut down on the number of calls and/or make customers feel better about their experience. From that, they probably instituted a business system that the operators followed to ensure customers received consistent, predictable, and high value service.
How can we learn from this for use in our businesses? What do our customers want and expect from us? How can we better predict or understand and then build systems to meet those needs? It starts with an understanding from the customer, participation and buy-in from your internal staff, and documentation of the determined protocols for all to follow. After that, the system needs to be monitored to be sure that it continues to meet customer needs. Are you doing this for your customers? If not, why not?
