Service Review: T-Mobile on 4th Street

 “I’ve never seen that before.” Definitely not something you ever want to hear from your doctor. But it’s not much more reassuring coming from a customer service rep.

But as the T-Mobile associate stared blankly at my brand new, already malfunctioning BlackBerry, that’s what he said to me.

I had purchased the phone in elation the day before. To do our jobs well, we need to be in constant communication with clients and coworkers.

 So our company outfits all of us with a BlackBerry. (And to a girl who used to sport a bottom-of-the line $29.99 Nokia, this is a big deal!)

After I had joyously opted for the sleek BlackBerry Curve, I explained to a T-Mobile service rep that my company had a business account and that my phone should be added to that account.

 The associate rang me up, packaged my new BlackBerry, and offered a friendly farewell. 

Filled with anticipation, I got back to the office and started to test its new features. But something was deeply wrong. Very wrong.

• My Internet was not registered
• The e-mail setup was plummeting
• None of the add-on features were working

The next day I walked back to the store and handed it to a different service rep- the one who had never seen that before.

After several minutes of navigating through my BlackBerry, the representative finally figured out the not-so-complicated issue: “Your phone doesn’t have the BlackBerry feature.” 

?!$@!?!**!?

Why would anyone buy a BlackBerry without the BlackBerry feature?

My original rep never offered this as an option, and I completely assumed that it would be installed. Otherwise, there’s not much point in purchasing that phone.

Further, every other employee on our business account has the BlackBerry feature, and had it from the get-go. So why did my first rep assume that I would be any different?

Clearly, she wasn’t listening to me and wasn’t really thinking about helping me.

Instead, she went through the motions and overlooked something so basic, yet so crucial.

And after the second rep figured out the problem, it would have been nice if he had offered a sincere apology for the oversight and the inconvenience. But that didn’t happen.

Every dealing with T-Mobile’s call center has been superb.  Over the phone, T-Mobile’s customer service representatives demonstrate attentiveness, sincerity, and knowledge. 

But the in-store experience really left something to be desired, reminding me of a great quote by Ralph Nichols: “The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”

Next time, please listen!

This visit: 2 Magnets

Sorry isn't enough (Part 2)

Yesterday I talked about my first visit to night racing at Churchill Downs.

After spending a night waiting in interminable lines, my friends and I swore that we would never return.

But the next morning, something caught my eye. Churchill Downs released, via the Courier Journal, an apology to everyone who had attended the previous night.

The Downs admitted to underestimating the turnout and promised to fix the problems for the remaining night races.

But they didn’t just say they were sorry. They showed they were sorry by also offering a clear strategy for how they were going to improve (e.g., $1 happy hour beers...yippee!).

I was impressed. They didn’t deflect blame on others, they didn’t try to minimize the problems, and they didn’t deny responsibility.

And it worked. The next week we decided to give it another shot in hopes the problems really were fixed, and they were!

Churchill Downs kept its word. Food and beverage areas were doubled and employees were tripled. We didn’t have to wait for anything, and patrons were able to socialize in groups instead of lines.

So the experience did a 180-degree turn.

Attendance only dropped from 28,011 the first night to 27,623 the second night, so the apology was extremely effective.

In all, the Downs (1) sincerely apologized, (2) asked for a second chance, and (3) then made sure to make that second chance count.

[Can you imagine what would have happened if they had apologized and then not fixed the problems?!?]

So what could have been a disaster ended up being a hit. Churchill Downs made a mistake, said they were sorry, and then proved they were sorry by correcting their mistake.

If only my nephew were that focused on public relations...

 

Sorry isn't enough

Little kids seem to believe that saying “I’m sorry,” can erase any wrongdoing.

Yesterday I told my 3 year old nephew, Daniel, not to shoot me with his water gun. So he blasted me in the face with his water gun.

But he immediately offered an unconvincing “I’m sorry!” as if that made it all just fine.

I explained that you can’t just say you’re sorry and make everything better; you have to actually mean it when you say it, and take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

It’s a lesson that Churchill Downs obviously understands.

I was there recently for the first of its three night racing events. When I arrived at 8pm, I couldn’t get over how big the crowd was. That many people surely guaranteed a raucous, fun night...right?

But appearances can be deceiving.

What I took to be enormous crowds of happy, socializing people were actually herds of anxious people all standing in queue, waiting for everything- betting, food, beer, you name it. The lines were ridiculous.

My group thought about leaving, but we were already there and we were all hot and thirsty. So we followed our instincts- we jumped in back of one of the beer lines! And 45 long, hot, beerless minutes later, we were finally rewarded with our brews.

It wasn’t entirely bad. When you spend the entire night ordering beer and getting right back in line, the fun is bound to “kick in” eventually.

However, paying $4.50 for 16 oz beers would have been far faster and just as much fun on Bardstown Road or at Fourth Street Live. So why return to the Downs?

My group agreed that we would never visit night racing again. And that seemed to be the general consensus of many of the other patrons I spoke to that night.

But Churchill Downs did get me to return. Tomorrow I’ll talk about how they got me back, and how they treated me on my return. Cheers!

Bernheim- Part 3

I've posted a bit about the visitors’ survey used at Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest.

Now let’s take a look at some of the nuts-and-bolts of the survey design.

[Again, I’m a big fan of Bernheim –literally, in terms of Facebook– and as always, our only goal is to foster conversations about customer research so that we can all learn and improve.]

Question Validity

Several of the questions use the following scale:

• Beyond Expectations
• Good
• Satisfactory
• Unsatisfactory

The biggest concern is the term “expectations.” Again, based on years of validating surveys by having customers take them and then talking to them about the survey-taking experience itself, we know that there are severe issues with any response category using the term “expectations.”

First, expectations are different for every person. Maybe someone had never been there and had no expectations at all. So they automatically could never check the highest category in this scale, since Bernheim can’t exceed expectations that didn’t exist.

Alternatively, maybe someone had very, very high expectations based on word-of-mouth, in which case there’s nowhere to go but down.

So really, the only people who would ever check “beyond expectations” are those who had low expectations to begin with.

Finally, there’s a consistency issue with the entire scale. Many respondents are not clear about the conceptual difference between “good” and “satisfactory.” And “beyond expectations” adds another level of confusion.

So here’s suggestion for a cleaner, simpler, more valid scale:

• Superb
• Acceptable
• Needs improvement

Until next time!

Update: read Part 1 & Part 2.

Bernheim- Part 2

An earlier post discussed the survey provided by one of our favorite family spots, Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest.

Here are a few other thoughts on the context of the survey.

Building Connections For the Future

If I were in charge of marketing for Bernheim Forest, my #1 goal of this survey would be to collect email addresses so that I can build the database and reach more people with my newsletters, email blasts, etc.

But on their survey, the email address is the LAST data point, and there is hardly enough room to write it in.

Why not collect the email address FIRST, and give the visitor lots of room to write it out legibly?

Also, while I just became a fan of Bernheim Forest on Facebook, I see NO mention of its Facebook page anywhere in their brochure or on their website. I’d love to see them build this connection in the near future.

Finally, why ask for my home and cell phone numbers? Are they really going to call me? Compared to emailing (or even snail-mailing), that would be far more expensive.

My advice is to shorten the survey to focus on the most important piece of information they want- email addresses- and provide some good reasons for the respondent to share it by outlining a few of the benefits they’ll receive.

Update: See Part 1, or go read Part 3.

Service Review: Za's in Louisville

Admittedly, I have a weird relationship with Za’s Pizza Pub on Bardstown Road. If I’m there, it’s either late at night and I’ve had too much beer, or I’m with my kids after a stressful day and I’m thinking about having too much beer.

Our visit last Friday was of the latter variety, so this review is based on sober judgment, whether I preferred it that way or not.

Za’s is a short walk from my house, and it offers a wonderfully relaxed and easy-going atmosphere. It’s like a local version of “Cheers,” but with great pizza. So we just love the vibe.

And that’s what made our lackluster experience so perplexing; the impersonal service was in such stark contrast to the restaurant overall.

Za’s is the kind of family-friendly, neighborhood pub where you expect the service to be incredibly personable. No, the whole place isn’t going to yell, “Norm” when you walk in (which is a positive if your name isn’t “Norm”), but you definitely expect deeper engagement than at a fast food restaurant.

For whatever reason, our server was in pure “order-taker” mode, and spoke with us just enough to fulfill her role, and not a word more.

She never offered her name, never made small talk, and kept all interactions to the minimum.

My kids are 3- and 5-years old, and everyone in the service industry should know that there is no better way to connect with parents than to connect with their kids.

We see it time after time: When service staff interact with children, the parents’ satisfaction scores soar.

So talking to kids is one of the easiest ways ever to boost satisfaction with a service experience. But our server was having none of it. (And I know I’m biased, but I think they’re pretty darn cute kids.)

And even the communication that did occur wasn’t very positive. When we ordered, she forgot to ask us what type of crust we wanted on our pizza. (Za’s offers a delicious wheat crust that I highly recommend). So when she stopped by two minutes later for refills, my wife asked, “Is it too late to get our pizza made with the wheat crust?”

I expected her to apologize for not asking about the crust, or to simply say, “Sure, I’ll go run back and tell the kitchen.”

Instead, she remarked, “I’ll go see.” Did we feel like an inconvenience? Oh yeah.

And did this bother us because we felt like she should have asked us about the crust in the first place? It did.

Also, she never let us know if she was able to convey the message to the kitchen in time. It’s not that we were on the edge of our seats with anxiety, but she missed a very easy chance to connect with us by running by and simply saying, “They’ll make sure to make it with the wheat crust!”

But that never happened. Again, no communication beyond what was necessary for her to bring food to our table.

There were some other minor lapses, like needing to ask three times for garlic sauce, etc. But all of those would have been overlooked with some conversation, a smile, and some enthusiasm.

The food was as good as ever and we’ll definitely be back, but I don’t feel any more of a fan than I did before this visit.

There was such an opportunity to connect with us, and I wish the server had taken it.

She was good with water refills and got the job done, but the utter lack of personality and interaction just doesn’t fit with Za’s image.

This visit: 2 Magnets

Bernheim Forest

We’re big fans of Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, and our family spent the afternoon there for Father’s Day last weekend.

As you enter its beautiful grounds, you pass through a kiosk where you receive a brochure and a survey.

I’m thrilled to see any business attempting to gather data about its customers, but there are some flaws in Bernheim’s execution that are very common.

With a few tweaks, I bet they can quintuple their response rate and greatly improve the quality of visitor feedback.

Delivery

Let’s start with the delivery of the survey. We received it (along with the brochure) on Saturday, but I didn’t even know it existed until I happened to review their literature five days later.

I didn’t notice the survey at the time because I was more focused on using the brochure to figure out which hike we were going to take, where we would have our picnic, etc. So we were too busy planning our excursion to even notice the survey.

(And believe me, we’re the kind of nerds who notice surveys.)

An easy-to-implement improvement is to have the kiosk greeter highlight the survey when s/he hands it out. Have the employee emphasize that a survey is a part of the informational packet, state how important feedback is to Bernheim, and implore the visitor to take it. (Stop by a Valvoline to see a company that has really trained its employees well on delivering feedback surveys.)

My guess is that simply raising awareness of the survey will increase the response rate tremendously.

Collection

Once I found the survey five days later, I realized that the only way to return to it is to put it in a collection box stationed at the same kiosk where I received it. If I need to fill out the survey while I am there and then make a special stop at the exit kiosk on my way out, they need to tell me this! I’m trying to juggle two kids, backpacks, and afternoon caffeine withdrawal. You can’t count on me to be proactive about your survey under such conditions.

Also, there’s no address to mail it to and no website where I can take the survey online. So unless I drive back there, there’s no way for me to provide feedback.

How many people have left the park, found the survey, and thrown it away for lack of any other option? (I realize they have a whole forest, but that’s still a big waste of paper.)

Bernheim has a decent website (see here) and they advertise it on the front cover of their brochure.

So why not add a page to the website where visitors can take the survey? And if their web platform doesn’t support data collection, there are many places that could help. (Ahem.)

Next time we’ll take a look at some of the questions on the survey. Enjoy the weekend!!

 Our clan BEFORE the hike. We looked far more bedraggled afterwards.

Update on December 8, 2009 by The Magnetic Group

Part 2 and Part 3 are also available!