I was recently interviewed for a podcast and the main topic was how Jet City goes about doing our customer service and at the end of the interview, I was asked if I could post something about our system and how to set it up. So that’s what this post is mostly about.
Before starting, let me say that customer service requirements at different companies are not going to be the same. For example, a one man consulting company with 5 or 6 major clients doesn’t need much of a system at all. A large company like AT&T, with millions of customers, will need a very expensive system for keeping track of everything. Jet City Device Repair is neither of these.
For those of you that don’t know us, we’re a small iPhone repair company that sees 500-600 new customers a month and responds to about a thousand inquiries. Unlike consulting companies, cable companies, or department stores, we don’t get a lot of repeat business – most people don’t break their iPhone on a regular basis. So it is critical for us to be able to respond to potential customers quickly or we risk losing their business to our competitors.
Here are the 5 biggest customer service challenges our system attempts to solve:
- We need to answer phone calls on the first customer call because potential customers don’t leave voicemails. If we don’t answer the phone, they hang up and call one of our competitors.
- We have to respond to emails in a prompt manner. Even if it’s the 3rd or 4th email in a chain and a different employee is in front of the computer, they have to be able to answer quickly and correctly.
- Keeping track of past conversations or sales. People expect you to remember them – even if the person talking to them isn’t the same person that interacted with them before.
- Sharing information between employees. If you don’t want to sound like an idiot when talking to a past or potential customer, you have to have some way of making sure information given out by one employee can be recalled by another employee in the future. Quick note here: In most cases, we’ll only talk to a customer 2 to 4 times – we don’t have a super long relationship with them.
- A limited budget. This means inexpensive or, better yet, free options are great for us.
The Tools
At Jet City Device Repair, we are big Google users. There’s three major reasons for this: They have great tools, they have a variety of tools, and most are free. Here’s a quick summary of what you will need to implement our system:
- Google Apps. This includes Gmail, Google Calendars, and Google Docs. You will be relying heavily on all three of these tools. It can be a bit tricky to setup and does require a modicum of technical work. Don’t be worried, though. It’s pretty easy. Google has a decent help sheet on the topic and your web hosting company should also have some information on it. Getting it setup properly will allow you to have emails like sales@yourcompany.com as well as accessing your mail by going to http://mail.yourcompany.com.
- Google Voice. You will get a phone number from Google with your local area code. You then give that number to your customers (on your website, business cards, phone book, business directories, etc). You then set Google Voice up to ring whichever phone or phones you want when the number is called. There’s also some cool rules setting that allows you to configure certain numbers to be called at certain times of the day and more.
- Mobile phone with good access to Google. I personally have an Android phone so Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs are pretty easy for me to access without much work. If you’re an iPhone user, you can setup your iPhone to access Gmail and your Google Calendar. You can then use the built in web browser to access Google docs. If you have a Blackberry, sell it right now and get an iPhone or Android phone.
Now for one of the coolest parts about these tools: With the exception of a mobile phone, all of this is free! That’s right, you don’t have to pay a dime to use any of the Google tools (you can if you want, but the free versions should be plenty to get you started).
The Setup
Once you have the necessary tools, it’s time to plug them all together. This part is easy.
- Setup a generic Google Apps account for your business. We use sales@jetcitydevices.com. This is where customers will send and receive all emails from. It will also get you a common calendar and Google Spreadsheet.
- Share the login and password for your generic account with everyone that will be doing customer service. This will allow them to log in to the system from anywhere at any time.
- Create a number of important labels within the Google Mail system. We have one label for each customer service representative, a call back label, waiting for parts (we sometimes run out of a particular part and call the customer back when it comes in), and a customer review label (where we put customer feedback). Your business might have other labels. The trick is to make sure that the inbox of your generic customer service email is always empty. Anything left in the inbox should be unread and considered important to deal with as soon as possible.
- Setup a Google Docs spreadsheet for tracking customers. This can take several forms but at the minimum you’ll want a column for the person’s name, contact info (either email or phone), the date they were last contacted, and some notes. You might want to have multiple tabs in the document to track things like customers, leads, warranty issues, and/or old contacts.
- Setup your Google Voice voicemail message. While you’re going to try to make sure no one ever hears your voicemail (because you’re answering their calls) it will happen. So record a voicemail letting them know if they leave a message, someone will call them back as soon as possible. Then, make sure that all voicemails are emailed to the generic company email.
- Setup your Google Voice account to ring at least the office phone and, if you’re like us, one other phone that someone is likely to be able to answer should the first number be busy or the office closed. This is critical – you want to make sure as many phone calls as possible get answered without going to voicemail so the more phones plugged into your Google Voice number the better.
At this point, you’re ready to get started.
The Process
Dealing with Email
The basic concept of our email is this: If anything is in the inbox, it should be unread or has just been read and is being dealt with. In other words, if anyone opens up the inbox from some other computer (or phone) they don’t touch an email that has already been read but assume that every other message needs immediate attention. The goal is to keep the inbox empty and, if it’s not empty, to make it empty as quick as possible.
If an email has been dealt with completely (no more action necessary) the email is simply archived (which removes it from the inbox but still keeps it around forever so it can be recalled if needed). If the email needs to be handled by someone in particular (such as a manager), the email is marked as unread and moved to the appropriate label for that person. The next time that person logs in, they’ll see they have unread messages in their label and they should deal with it. If the email needs further follow-up we again mark the email as unread and move it to the appropriate follow-up label.
Dealing with Voicemail
We’ll talk about dealing with phone calls next but for now, let’s assume someone called in the middle of the night and left a voicemail. This is what’s cool about having Google Voice and hooking it up to your Gmail (see step #5 above) – you can now treat voicemails just like emails. If they’re in the inbox and marked unread, they haven’t been dealt with yet and need to be ASAP. Once they’re listened to and handled, they are archived or marked as unread and moved to the appropriate label. Simple as pie.
Dealing with Phone Calls
In our business, fixing broken iPhones for people, many people want to call before bringing in their phone. People just want to know they can trust someone before they hand them their baby and let them tear it apart. I would guess that around 70% of all our customers call before coming. If we don’t answer the phone, they call one of our competitors instead. In other words, in our business, it is absolutely critical that we answer the phone when someone calls. Failure to do so means lost business.
To make sure as many people as possible get their call answered, we have setup our Google Voice to simultaneously ring both our office phone and that of one of our managers. In addition, the manager’s phone is set to ring early in the morning before we open – we probably get about 5-7 phone calls every morning before we open. The result of this is that even if the manager is off for the day, he can still help answer the phones both before we open and when our technicians are swamped with repairs.
The one problem with having someone answer the phone when they’re not actually at work is that they need some way to communicate the information discussed with the customer to the guys currently working in the shop. They can do this either through a computer or, if they don’t have access to a computer, through their cellphone. This is why it’s important to have a cellphone that integrates well with Google.
A manager’s cellphone has access to our company calendar, so they can schedule a repair on the spot for a customer and the guys in the shop will immediately see it. They can also send a quick email to the generic email address with any important notes and the guys in the shop will handle it like any other message coming into the inbox.
And what if the customer has talked to us before? Or is calling about a problem with their repair? Any technician can simply ask the customer to hold for a moment and then, either through a computer or cell phone, take a look at the necessary Google Document, find the customer, read the notes, and then resume the conversation with the customer and sound like an intelligent person. When the conversation is over, they can make additional notes so future conversations with the customer go equally smoothly.
Make it a Formal Process
Whatever customer service tool you end up using there is one more piece that you have to have in place to make it work: Create a formal process and get every employee trained on exactly how it works and make sure they do it. Without this last piece, the best and most expensive system in the world will not work. If employees don’t take notes, don’t put things in the calendar, don’t answer the phone, or let emails sit for days in the inbox; this system, or any other, will fail. You have to have consistency across every person in your organization. So if you decide to implement this system, or any other, make sure that every single person is aware of exactly how the customer service pieces fit together and what is expected of them.
An Example: From Lead to Sale to Warranty Issue
First let me say that warranty issues are extremely rare for us but, like any business, they do occasionally happen and that process will let me really show how our system works from start to end.
It all begins when a customer calls to inquire about our pricing. They call while our shop technician is on the phone with another customer. The result is that our manager’s phone rings. He answers it just like he was in the office. The customer asks for the price, how long it will take, our location, etc. The manager, who happens to be at the grocery store at the time, answers all these questions and asks if the customer wants to schedule an appointment. They agree and our manager looks on his phone at the day’s calendar and finds a time that is open and works for the customer. He then puts the customer in the calendar and the conversation ends.
The technician in our shop, who is now off the phone, sees the new appointment appear in the company calendar an knows not to schedule anyone else in that slot.
Later in the day the customer comes in and has their phone fixed. When the process is done our technician enters the customer into the Google Spreadsheet with the date, the repair, and any notes that might be important.
Two weeks later the customer emails to say they have a problem with the repair. This email comes in at 8am when we’re not open. Our technician starts his shift later in the day and sees the email. He immediately responds to the customer saying that we’d be happy to fix it for them at not cost and asks when they’d like to come in. At the same time, the technician puts a note in the Google Doc for this customer saying what was wrong.
The customer doesn’t respond to our email until the next day when a different technician is working. This new technician sees the email, reads the entire thread to make sure he’s up to date, and also checks the Google Doc for any other notes. The customer has requested an appointment for the following Saturday to come in. This second technician puts the appointment in the shared calendar and emails the customer back to say it’s all setup.
Saturday rolls around and yet another technician is working. They see this warranty customer in the calendar with complete details about what’s wrong with the phone. When the customer comes in, the technician is waiting for them, knows what’s wrong, has everything in place to fix it as quickly as possible, and gets it fixed. The customer then leaves happy and we put a quick note in our Google Doc stating how everything went.
Conclusion
Using Google tools any small-to-medium sized company can build a fairly robust customer service system. This will insure that customers get serviced quickly and properly. It will not only insure less headaches for your organization, but will lead to more sales and happier customers. This will almost certainly help to differentiate you from your competitors and get people talking about what a great company you are to deal with because, let’s face it, most companies suck at customer service. Don’t be one of them!