A Helpful Attitude Builds Relationships and More

There are people who are very easy to ask help or assistance from. They always go to great lengths to be of help to a brother, a parent, a cousin, a classmate, an office mate or even a complete stranger. It comes naturally to these people. My mother is the greatest influence in my life about being helpful. She showed me by her own conduct and attitude towards people how it is to be helpful.

It simply came very easily for her to decide to help someone. I have seen this dozens of times. I saw how she helped a man get his wife out of the hospital after giving birth to their child. The man said he had nobody else to run to. The hospital will not release his wife because of unpaid bills. My mother took a pen and paper, wrote something and then just sent the man off to wait for her in the hospital. It was our family driver who told me later on that she paid the hospital bills and just sent our driver to give the receipt to the man. She can't even remember the man after.

Another case was about two girls with really dark skin and very curly hair. They came one morning to ask for leftovers because their mother left them for about a week with no food. Their mother never came back. I can't forget it becaue she did not give last night's left overs. She asked them to sit around our garden table. She took my spaghetti (My Spaghetti) she prepared for my breakfast and served it to the two girls with hot chocolate. She just smiled and told me there's always a loaf of bread on the table for me. These girls not only lost food, their mother just left them. Of course I was ok with a loaf of bread but actually I just got two slices because she packed the loaf of bread and a bottle of peanut butter (my brother's favorite peanut butter) and gave it to the two girls. It's cool. I can always get two slices of bread from the table...I know.

Being helpful is not something you get after a seminar. Knowing how to write a sales letter, maybe something you can get from a seminar. Building a website is something you can learn from a seminar. Baking a cake is something you get from a seminar. A helpful attitude is simply not a thing you pull out of a kit in a seminar. A helpful attitude has something to do with character.

I always like working with customer service, technical support or even marketing people with an attitude of being helpful. It's always easy working with them even for long hours. When you work for a company that provides maintenance service for large computer systems, you must be able to respond to a customer call any way you can. What if, the caller is not your customer?

A call coming in on a Friday one summer was made by someone asking help in trying to print a report in WordPerfect. I used to do a lot of writing in WordPerfect back then and then switch to PageMaker and then to Microsoft Word. I was always the last to leave as usual. While everyone was rushing to the door to go home (it was already 5:00 PM), I was holding this phone listening to a desperate female voice.

I can't recall her name anymore but let's call her Beth. Beth called two of their suppliers who provided them their computers. She was told to call tomorrow morning because nobody is in technical support (Of course, it was already 5:00 PM.). To get help she called all the business names in the phone book under computers and fortunately for her there was only less than ten of us on the page. To make the long story short, I work for a company that was listed close to the end of the page of the phone book.

Receiving the call I immediately switch to our standard response protocols of asking the identity of the caller and the company, verifying if they are currently enrolled in our service, and blah blah blah. She was not our customer and her company is not listed in our maintenance support program. The usual response to this is to go into a prepared script meant to get her interested in our maintenance services but I felt the desperation in her voice. I felt that she was not in the listening mode right then. I simply switched to my listening mode and just let her talk about her predicament.

Beth called because her boss who is the Vice President of Finance for their company have prepared some financial data in QuattroPro and wants to integrate the spreadsheets in the report written in WordPerfect. At that time only WordPerfect can do this without any conversion being done with QuattroPro spreadsheets. The report is suppose to be submitted and presented first thing in the morning. His boss is relying on her to finish the report that same night to give her boss time to review it before he goes home.

I walked her through the process of how to paste the spreadsheets in QuattroPro onto the WordPerfect document. There were so many data representing many tables to be pasted on the WordPerfect document. After she completed the task she requested that I stay on the line while his boss is reviewing the report she printed. I told her that I will hang up and wait for her call. I promised her I won't go home until she tells me that the report is okay. Of course more requests came after I hang up, like how to create charts, how to paste the charts into WordPerfect and how to insert charts into Harvard Graphics (at that time Harvard Graphics was a choice for presentations not Microsoft PowerPoint). Eventually, Beth did finish the report that night. I hang up and forgot about Beth and the call.

Several weeks after, my account executive comes to me and says: "Boss, remember that account we were trying to pursue for many months for our computer maintenance contract. Someone just called and requested for the maintenance contract. I haven't been approaching that client because the Vice President for Finance were giving us a hard time about our service fees which he said were higher than the other suppliers."

When I asked my account executive what brought about the sudden change of heart, he told me about the story of the Administrative Assistant working for the Vice President for Finance. Apparently, our proposals like all the other proposals submitted to the company were all expensive and were more or less of the same price levels. Finance have to decide on one eventually so the Vice President asked his Administrative Assistant which one she will choose. She chose us and the reason she gave was that somebody from the company helped her solve a technical problem even though she was not even a customer yet. Her logic was that if she can get help even if she's not a customer yet, how much more if she had a maintenance contract.

My account executive was thinking of sending her something to thank her but can't remember her name. I said, "Let me guess--Her name is Beth". His eyes brightened and asked me how I knew? I simply said, his "girl story" sounds like a Beth.

Technical Support is More Than Just Technical

When you get that call from a customer about technical support, what comes to your mind? What conversation will be running in your head? Most of the time, what comes to your head are procedures, techniques and step-by-step process of resolving a technical issue by the book. I know. I did most of these things all the time.

There is also a lesson I learned about responding to a customer call. The lesson is: Not all calls for technical support are actually technical.

There were two identically configured servers serving a company manufacturing slippers for export. One December day it just refuse to make identical copies of their database into each others hard disk as it is suppose to. The call came in a few days before Christmas. I always get these calls a few days before Christmas.

The company cannot afford not to have their servers back up each others database because they are suppose to shutdown the servers on Christmas Day for maintenance and the back up ensures business continuity after the Christmas season. The main office in Japan will be cut off from their manufacturing plant completely without the servers. The company adapts a "Just in Time" manufacturing scheme which makes real time connection critical to the manufacturing division. Added to this is the fact that the new design of their system is just one of only three in the whole Asia region. This means its been tried only three times. There are no precedents yet of a downed server under this design. There are no ready answers if these servers crash. There are no references. There are no manuals to help us out once a crisis unfolds.

Our customer's representative naturally is the Manager for Management Information Systems. She was the one who recommended the system, the service provider of the database management system and of course the hardware (from us). She put her reputation on the line in putting the system in place, now it is about to fail not just her department and company but her personally.

The provider of the software and database system also arrived on the same day. They were the first to be informed of the problem. We were all in a huddle: the MIS team of the customer, software provider and us the hardware provider.

We knew that if the system will not be up by Christmas, top management will be looking for answers and eventually someone who will provide the answers for the fiasco. We did not need to hear from her who that someone will be because she knows the bucks stops at her door step.

I pulled out every information about our hardware including references to the same installation in other countries. It was functioning as it should. Our contacts from systems design and software development were not very sure if they can work around the software and the database. There was no technical reference to find out what exactly was happening to the software but there was also no reference that the problem is suppose to happen. In this industry, if the problem did not happen yet, it will not be in the manual. The software provider have not encountered the technical problem themselves. We were in a situation where we had no answers.

I was no longer concern about the technical issue, I was concern about her, the MIS Manager who trusted us. We are about to fail her. Technically, we can always blame the software but it does not help our customer, the MIS Manager. She will still be responsible if the system crashes due to a faulty systems design. We have to give her the confidence again not in the design or the system but confidence in us.

As soon as I got a chance to talk to our own Business Systems Manager who also is our most experienced systems engineer, I confirmed that there was no way to go around the problem based on the existing design. The system will not be online as long as we start up the system using the existing design. The problem shifted from tweaking with the design to simply getting the system up by Christmas. My solution was to let the database management system run on a single server but to do that we have to roll in a hardware with a lot higher configuration and possibly a server from a different brand because it was available. This server will be available within 24-hours. The alternative was to get it via Hongkong or Singapore which will take weeks. We have only several days before Christmas.

I was now asking our Business Systems Manager to stick his head out together with mine. I was recommending a course of action out of the books and totally against our protocols. We were recommending a solution that was not in our procedure plus I was about to recommend a brand replacement which was against marketing policy. Of course I got a call from our CEO himself a few hours after they got wind of what we were about to do.

The position I shared with my CEO was to choose between the protection of a brand or the retention of a customer. My boss of course responded by giving me the classic "chicken and egg" logic. If we lose the brand we have nothing to sell, if we lose the customer we have nobody to sell to. My response was, I can always reposition the same brand with the customer but we can not reposition customers in the greater scheme of our marketing strategy once we have lost them. Besides, if we lose the confidence of our customer, especially this particular customer, it does not really matter what brand we carry the customer will have nothing to do with us after this crisis.

We knew we could pull off technically the solution we had in mind, but we need also to act on our customer's fear. The fear of failure in the eyes of her superiors. The MIS Manager was up for more than 24 hours already. We were also going to be up almost twenty hours if she does not go home and leave the factory. The lack of sleep was increasing her anxiety and stress. It was difficult talking to her and she had no breakfast when we met her that morning. It was a good thing we brought along food for her and her team.

Looking back this is what we did:

We did our homework - Research, research, research
We immediately formed a research team of two (2) people who will research both software and hardware issues of the problem using the most specific information we got about the systems design. Since we always have a profile of our customers right down to their favorite dessert, it was easy for us to know what will immediately cheer up our MIS Manager. Sweet food and in that very specific situation a bit of protein (burgers) and hot drink (coffee). Food can always calm people down. Another thing I learned is that people are easier to talk to if they are munching burgers or doughnuts with steaming hot coffee. You think this is insignificant, try talking to someone who is hungry and without sleep for twenty-four hours about a problem she thinks you cause. I have not read about this approach in any customer or sales manual but it always worked for me for many years.

Informed Top Management - Yours and Your Customer
After we have the facts straight from direct interview of the customer and our research, we prepared a brief background of the issue, what we are currently doing to resolve the technical issue and sent it via email to our superiors. In the case of our customer, we have to ask the permission of the MIS Manager when to start informing her superiors, who will do the disclosure, how to deliver the information and how much detail to disclose. It has to be her call because she has a lot more at stake. Our own CEO however was already advised of the pertinent perspectives of the issues in the event our customer's superior starts calling. The main objective was to keep things in perspective and to keep stakeholders calm since there is no crisis to speak of yet.

Get the Blessing of Top Management
We informed our superiors of what we intend to do. I had no choice. I was asking them to roll in an asset worth thousands of dollars just as a stand-in solution. It was not a sale. There were no margins to speak of. It was just plain and simple first aid solution to help a customer. Only the blessing of top management can get the wheels rolling towards resolving the issue. An expensive one at that.

Get Other Stakeholders in ASAP
Finding the right hardware specification was just one part of the solution. The other part is the software that runs the database. Although we can handle the technical aspect of the hardware design, we still need to talk to the software guys to make the whole system work. We also need to talk to the MIS team of the customer to understand how the database is suppose to work for the company. All of them need to hear the plan because each of them have technical capabilities to execute different aspect of the plan.

Form a Unified Plan
Each team has a role to play but roles only work if it moves under a cohesive plan of action. You can learn how to come up with a great plan or you can learn it as you go but make one. Get all the stakeholders and put the plan together. More importantly execute.

I said a lot of things that really only boils down to a simple thing: Not all technical issues call for technical solutions. What seems to be a technical issue may just require some form of human understanding and discernment and acting on them.

Nurturing Relationship with Customers in the Face of Global Uncertainty

The financial crisis sweeping the US and already sending tremors to most of the European Union is definitely one of many global uncertainties we hope we never have to face but unfortunately has now entered our front doors. There is no escaping this. Those who are still in denial and have not planned contingencies will find themselves with a company with no more assets or working for another owner.

During the Asian crisis, the only thing we could do was prepare for the worse. I was working for an IT company providing maintenance services to computer network systems. We had to get down to the painful process of re-assessing what we really have in terms of receivables, of projected sales and current cash flows. Managing a marketing group at that time was so painful because I was there witnessing and causing a lot of good people to leave. I trained these people and some may have to use what we have taught them somewhere else. The Asian crisis hit us at a time when most of our projections were already carved in stone. Dropping brands and replacing others were such an emotionally loaded process for some of my sales people who have built their relationships and competence around a certain product brand.

Even before that crisis, I already knew that the only way we can assure constant profitability and sustainability was to nurture a critical mass of customers. We have to do the math. We have to calculate to a certain degree of confidence how much each of our customers were contributing to our annual revenues: which ones provided the highest margins and which ones were the least costly to serve.

It was a learning process for both Marketing and Technical Support teams learning that less than 20% of our more than 300 customers under contract yielded 80% of our revenue in the maintenance service category. Maintenance services contributes 40% of our overall revenue every year. It also contributes the most profit margin after the first year of the contract.

We ranked and grouped them in such a way that those who constitute 80% of our revenues were now assigned to the most dependable Account Executives. No account executive was suppose to handle more than 10 of these accounts. I handled the most difficult accounts (accounts with mission critical servers).

It was a tedious process of looking into each of our accounts and doing the following:

• Updated their profiles.
• Determined the impact of the crisis on each of our customers (ability to acquire, expand, continue maintenance, recruit new people)
• Current products and services we have delivered and projected to be delivered to the customer
• Impact of the crisis on our own products and services and our ability to deliver them
• Impact on pending orders (delivery period, price, discounts, etc.)

It was top priority to start doing courtesy visits instead of cutting down on the visits or customer calls.

In an economic crisis, sticking to the basics can force you to consider what you totally ignored in more complacent times--your existing customers.

To start off 2009, you will start getting the most simple and elementary notes on customer service: Using basic customer service strategy for customer acquisition and retention.

Let's get back to basics about acknowledging who are your customers.

When identifying Customers in the Customer Service perspective, you are only looking at two (2) major kinds: Internal and External Customers.

People in your organization who need your products or services to get their jobs done are your Internal Customers. On the other hand, people or organizations outside yours who require and buy your product or service to satisfy a need or solve a problem are your External Customers.

You need to know the distinction between the two for purposes of managing processes and measuring results. Both require respective Customer satisfaction metrics in some way to measure the quality of service or product delivery.

Your concern for Internal Customers is cost driven while for External Customers it is revenue and profit margin driven. The approaches to communication and service delivery will be different. The proximity of Internal Customers to you makes it relatively easy to deliver Internal Customer service.

External Customers however will require different media or channels to communicate to you. You will have no way to determine where your External Customers are, physically and in mind, at any given moment to specifically trigger communication.

If you are working for a retailing organization selling microcomputers and its accessories, and provide maintenance service, you will have Internal and External Customers.

Your Accounting Department may have people who will be using PCs that will need your maintenance service. It will be quite odd to tell accounting to go call your competitor for service you already have in-house.

Your External Customer may be a company, individual or any organization using PCs that may need your services. The quality of the delivery and the constitution of "good" Customer Service is hinged on the expectations of that Customer and execution of service.

Beyond the measurable results, the quality of the service or product is really based on how close we are to meeting and satisfying Customer expectations.

Why Do We Always Do The Basic Things Wrong?

While helping doing an inventory of computer accessories and electronic gadgets in a retailing outfit, I can't help but ask the people manning the store how they keep track of their customers.

Guess what? They don't!

They don't keep track of where they are getting their sales: What product and who buys them? The last time I was in retailing was in 1998 selling the very exact things but I carried more than 50 brands with the likes of Seagate, IBM, Hayes, Microsoft, Lotus, Creative Labs, Intel, AMD, and a lot more.

I can't believe that in 2008, retailers are still doing a lot of things wrong. Well not exactly wrong, but they don't do the most basic things at all (at least to get the sales consistently coming).

Back when I was managing retailing operations more than 50% of our sales were from more than 30% of our repeat customers. Customers who buy more than two items or have bought the second time will always end up in our database together with information about what hardware or software they already have at home and at the office (in this order). Eliciting this "basic" information from customers have been integrated into the "script" of counter sales associates so that even if we don't get a sale we always have at least 5 to 10 new names in our database on that day.

Basic sales training will tell you that it is harder to get a new customer than encouraging repeat sales from an old customer but most retailing organizations ignore this. It is amazing. 9 out of 10 counter sales personnel will not initiate on their own a sales campaign for existing customers and more than half of retailing (specially small businesses) do not have such a campaign as a matter of policy.

If you want to test this, just walk into a computer store or even a hobby shop. You will most likely leave the store without the store clerk ever asking you about what you already have or how to get in touch with you about what you may need in the future.

Don't ask me if I tried it. I bought books, a new TV, a DVD player, a video game player, DVD rewritable discs, a headphone set, 2 pair of shoes, a file box, a knapsack, a LED flashlight, binders, and more since January of this year and not a single sales person or clerk ever ask me anything.

You don't really need much to get basic information from your customers. I designed a form that can be printed on a letter size paper (four forms on one side) that keeps information about customer's full name, phone, email, address (if you're lucky because some are not just concern about security they just find filling up forms tedious like me) or even mobile phone numbers. To encourage them to give information, I usually tell them that they get to be invited to free seminars sponsored by our partners and in some special occasions I get to give them freebies from our partners.

I also created a Microsoft Excel template to compile all of this information so that later on I can easily integrate that into mail merge or even a fax campaign template.

If you really keep track after a year, you will be amazed at the pattern that will be seen after collating all the information including sales from each of your customers. You can even predict which week in a month they will most likely order again their supplies (I used to sell printer paper and ink).

I like to hear the expression "You called me just in time!" from customers every time my telemarketers make their daily calls.

In my next blog I will show how a simple graph in Microsoft Excel help me advise a friend not to close shop just because customer traffic is not consistent in their new store location in the same shopping mall.

Gung Ho and Leadership

The book "Gung Ho!" by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles is a must reading for those who would like to turn things around in an organization that either has lost its way or lost its steam. For many, this could be an eye-opener but for some who have been in the trenches of developing organizations and driving them to take the challenges of evolving, much of the teachings in “Gung Ho!” would be a given.

“Gung Ho!” teaches about the Lesson of the Squirrel: Worthwhile Work. People must understand that their work is important in the greater scheme of things. People in our organization must share this understanding and the goals that must be achieved. Our understanding and our shared goals must be ingrained in our values or are sustained by our values.

The second lesson of “Gung Ho!” is the "Lesson of the Beaver": In Control of Achieving the Goal. The book defines the elements of control as the ability to understand and know the realm within which you can act, to have full appreciation of every person in the organization, and to challenge and stretch the boundaries of uncharted possibilities within capacity of the people who will pursue the goals.

“Gung Ho!” closes with the third lesson: The "Lesson of the Goose": Cheering Each Other On. Cheering each other on means congratulations should be true whether active or passive. We must cheer or excite people to go on not just in the end but the whole stretch or process of achieving results.

You get a variation of all of these lessons in management classics like "In Search of Excellence" by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., followed by "A Passion for Excellence" by Thomas J. Peters and Nancy Austin, "Theory Z" of Professor William Ouchi of Harvard, "Mission Possible" by Ken Blanchard and Terry Woghorn and even from the more recent "Direct from Dell" written by Michael Dell himself of Dell Computer Corporation.

The one thing that “Gung Ho!“ does not openly teach but is skirting or is swimming around in the book is the key that binds all three lessons. The key that ensures the three lessons are understood and lived by. The key is leadership.

The individual character that grows from these lessons must be embodied in a person. It must be perceived in and lived by the one person who will demonstrate that these lessons are real and achievable. That person is the leader.

There are many shades of leaderships you may have witnessed and read about but the most common for me in my experience for the last 20 years seem to fall in different colors of grey in two personalities: The Boss and The Politician.

The Boss is the control freak: Always scared of losing control, always putting people down, always making everyone feel inadequate, always in on things however trivial or mundane, always the chairman of something, the only one who can do it, never delegates, all-knowing, the only one who can approve, only one who will be there, only one who is first, only one who is last, hates the young potential heir to the throne, the self-appointed expert of everything or the Only One of almost anything.

The Politician is the other side of The Boss: Always pleasing everyone, cannot make up his own mind, always seem to be doing something about nothing, always find someone to blame for anything, has always the right reason why it isn't him when things are bad, always find a good reason why it is him when things are good, wants to be boss but does not want to be accountable, the regular court jester, always congratulating but always scheming to get you out of the way, very good at teaching Gung Ho! but don't know where to start, always starting something but never finishing, finishing something but does not remember why he started it or he is simply the common variety "wimp" in an executive suit.

We need leaders who are generative. We need leaders who bring out the best in us. The most memorable interaction with leaders that defined who I am is not really the most astounding but they are indeed profound. These leaders are not the kind we see in the limelight and they seldom are. These leaders make us realize without trying who we can be or what we can be. Their mere presence calms us and assures us that things will be better.

We should seek out the leaders among us. Bring them out and follow them. Better yet, let us seek out the leader within ourselves let it define the rest of who we are. Let that leader bring us into the light allowing us to discern the best in us that has always been there.

Gung Ho, friends!

Driving Your Marketing Campaign with Simple Databases

I always believe that business can't operate very long without organized or structured data of some kind.

You have these forms of data accumulating somehow in some point of your existence. The important thing is to recognize these forms of data and identify which ones are relevant to your operation and your future plans.

The data that will most likely be critical to you are those that tell you about the status of your revenue, the nature, rate and volume of your costs, and the profile of your customers.

If you are most enterprises, the last one will most likely not exist in your business. You might think you have it. Do check this out? You will most likely not have this data in a readily accessible and usable form.

Years and years ago, I use to work for a company that is into retailing of microcomputers and just about anything you can attach to it. I had zero budget for any campaign. I did have a team of ladies, however, in my telemarketing doing calls everyday just to sell supplies or what we categorically refer to as consumables.

These telemarketing ladies have a list of all purchasing officers or anyone who had authority to order supplies for their respective companies. The list was either a print out or an index card with a company name, purchasing officer's name and several phone numbers.

Each of the telemarketers kept their own list. You had to literally write on the list or cards to update it. If you filled up a card with scribbling, you were to get another one and staple it to the old card.

If it was the 1970s, a system like that would be considered efficient. I was working in the PC age in 1995. The system was not just cumbersome it was downright amusing watching the ladies update "their database".

One of the product brands (among more than 50) I managed was Microsoft Windows 95© at a time when 99.99% of Microsoft DOS© installations were pirated. Nobody believed in buying original software then. A law was just passed rendering stiffer penalties for piracy.

I have decided that a mail campaign was the most effective tool to use in creating demand for original software. The amount of material that the Business Software Alliance was sending on a regular basis proved to be good arsenal for the campaign. The only hitch was you have to pay the post office for every mail that is delivered.

Finance was very supportive as long as they don't give you cash. It gave me a whole new perspective what Finance was really all about. All they suggested was: "Go use the delivery trucks. They always go out on schedule".

After that, I got encouraging words like, "Don't dare divert the routes because we'll take that out of your supplies budget". I was pretty much left to device a no-brainer no-cost mail campaign.

To jumpstart the campaign, I have to get a list of targets. The list from the telemarketers was the only obvious choice. I still need to organize it in some way and then store it as an electronic file.

I decided to create a new format in Microsoft Excel© since most of the files like price list, product brands, and parts inventory were already in Microsoft Excel©, most of the administrative staff were already using it in some way. I requested the supervisor to put all their lists in Microsoft Excel© based on the available data from their cards.

Not all telemarketers were very good in Microsoft Excel© since nobody wanted to master it. There was really no need to do so since historically telemarketers never get to stay more than five months.

I had to design a crash course in Microsoft Excel© and Microsoft Word©. I was able to design a tailored training that needed only eight hours to complete. The actual data from the telemarketers were use to rapidly build data while still in training.

There was a lot of grumbling and visible resistance from the telemarketers. Getting them off the phone for a day for training naturally means they won't have sales for a day.

The real consolation was the personal directive that was given to all telemarketers by the president. Every one with direct contact with Customers by phone or over the counter must have training. The list in Microsoft Excel© although very crude at first finally got its first edition submitted in a single spreadsheet file.

So I thought about what I can do with the list in Microsoft Excel©. There was a slight problem with the distribution aspect of the mailers. I had to work out a schedule that synchronizes with the daily route of the delivery vans. The vans were assigned according to cities.

The Microsoft Excel© data must be able to sort itself not only according to cities but also according to streets right down to the building and floor. It was the only effective and efficient way to sort the mailers after they were printed and packed.

The problem with this realization was that I will be put in a situation where I may have to ask the telemarketers again to enter their data in another way. They now have to break up the addresses to specific cities, streets and buildings.

I drafted a letter in Microsoft Word© and use its "Merge" feature. By the way, if you do a little experimentation, you will find out that you can link your Microsoft Excel© data to your Microsoft Word© Merge Letter.

I just "linked" the existing spreadsheet data with my letter and I have hundreds of letters with each letter "personalized" to a specific customer right down to their nicknames and the exact product or service we were providing them.

The mailing labels were "no-sweat" since most word-processors like Microsoft Word© already have built-in label forms in popular sizes.

I only needed to be able to sort the data according to building, street and city. So I suggested my own spreadsheet template or form for telemarketers to fill up every time they get new information from customers. It was not really a problem since each telemarketer had her own workstation.

By using the spreadsheet I was able to sort the names of the customers according to the street and city, and then generate a mailing list. You can now sort out the mailers according to this mailing list and pack them accordingly for delivery.

Now all I have to do was talk to the Supervisor in charge of scheduling the deliveries. The supervisor knew the exact streets and city they will be going through. They normally have the schedule before five in the afternoon every day.

By knowing the exact building, street and city, I can actually sort my mailers according to the schedule and routes of the delivery truck. I simply asked the delivery assistants to pass by my cubicle and pick up the mailers for the day.

After a few weeks, I was able to work out the other details I can add to the spreadsheet customer list. I was now able to enter in the remarks column that this customer is just a supplies customer, this is an inkjet customer, and that a simple form ply paper customer. The unexpected benefit of this data is we can also put in the index column, when is the best time to call a customer.

We were now able to schedule our telemarketing activities according to the expected time supplies of customers start running out. Two or three days of the expected need, telemarketers are hot on the phones calling these customers.

We were able to level off inventory because of the predictable cycle of the need. We were always calling at the right moment.

My simple spreadsheet evolve into a more useful set of data we can safely call a database. This demonstrates how a little effort to record or document simple information about customers turn into an unexpected tactic for getting the customer at the right moment, and grudgingly without additional cost.

The really good thing about the experience is now the president of the company was suddenly supportive of what we were doing. Telemarketers were no longer complaining if we request assistance for data gathering campaigns in preparing for a product launch or for a market study.

Telemarketers knew that they will eventually benefit from the ideas we churn out. Telemarketers were earning from commissions from sales so they have every reason to support our efforts.

The other use I got with the database we have is as a negotiating tool with OEM distributors. While most of the computer retailers can say they have lots of customers, I can actually sight the exact number of customer we have who are regular customers and who are intermittent customers right down to what industry.

I can wave around pie charts of how many customers where in the financial services, manufacturing, shipping, education, government, and if you ask me more I can tell you how many are CEOs and how many are CFOs.

It does wonders especially if you are trying to entice OEM distributors to get your company to launch certain top of the line products every year and every quarter. It's a great boost to image. You can always let your OEM partner foot the bill if you can back up your market or customer profile with numbers and charts.

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Customer Relationship: Building and Nurturing the After-sales Process

My blog entitled "The Six Handicaps in After-Sales Customer Relations" listed the reasons why enterprises do not set up or develop after-sales customer relations. These reasons are also the handicaps in building after-sales customer relationships.

Now if you still need to know why you should even start the effort go read my blog on the "The 20 Customer Service Facts You Should Know" for a quick eye-opener.

Now lets work on finding the keys to build and nurture customer relationships.

Establish a Policy to Build and Nurture Customer Relationship
In organizations, unless you implicitly set the path towards a certain set of behavior you will have to rely on traditions to set the culture of customer service. Since it will take a long long time for government to set the rules on customer service the next best thing is to establish a policy.

If you want to take customer service seriously, you will have to set the policy and take the necessary steps to get what you want done in writing. You just can't walk in on your people and make an announcement that you are now a customer service-oriented organization. Get your people together choose a lead person and empower this person to get the right team to draft the policy.

You must have a good representation from the different business units or key process in your business. This ensures that the team drafting the policy will get inputs from a wider base of stakeholders who will either take the frontline or get involved in the delivery of your customer service program.

Of course, you will also have to define the broad areas of concern to set the direction and theme of your draft. The ideal path is to get a facilitator for this purpose specially if you don't have a strategic plan yet.

Design, Plan and Build a Customer Service Program
Once you have a policy document, you will have to do a roll-out. This is another way of describing the launching of your policy by getting the stakeholders together and announcing that the official copy of your policy document is out. Most organizations simply hand out the document but it has more impact if the owner or chief executive make the formal announcement before it is actually handed out. If you think it is expensive to be handing out copies to all then just get everyone in one place and give the official copy to the supervisors or department heads in the presence of everyone.

After the roll out is done, the next step is to get each of the business unit or departments to come up with their own customer service program within their units or departments. You can use the process in the policy drafting to build the teams in each of this units or department to come up with the program.

You can use my blog entitled "The Six Dimensions in Customer Service" on building a customer service program as a guide to start the process.

Choose and Appoint a Champion
If you are serious about building relationship with customers through your customer service program you need somebody who will push this program across your enterprise or organization. Not only will this person push the customer service agenda in every corner of your enterprise, this person must also be empowered to tell you things as they are and not sugar-coat the content of your feedback mechanism.

You have to designate a champion and just like the roll out of your policy document, you will have to anoint this champion in front of everyone. By doing so you not only reinforce your resolve but you will actually tell everyone that you installed someone to ensure your program will stay in place.

Decide to Take a Leadership Role
Who you are in the context of your policy and your customer service program will determine if you are serious about putting value to customer service or paying lip service to it.

You can take this as a challenge or as a good excuse not to start your customer service program but the bottom-line is no serious effort will begin unless you take the lead.

You are the embodiment of your policy, your quality metrics, your customer service process, and your enterprise as a whole. Your people must see you in action, your decision must be a reflection of your policy, and your internal process must operationalize this policy and this can only be institutionalized if you have the leadership to make it so.
In my more than 10 years managing customer service programs I had bad, frustrating, exciting and truly memorable days but not a single dull moment. Not one believe me.

Customer Service Programs are day-to-day endeavors. You build it a day at a time.