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Solutions June 2006
President’s
Message
By
TIMOTHY J. MEHL, CDC
Make
Customers Smile
A
note from DMIA President Tim Mehl,
CDC: Mark Trumper, CEO of Maverick
Label, is a former DMIA president
and one of the most highly regarded
people in our industry. He’s
that rare combination of charismatic
salesman, management genius and
technology expert. He’s
developed and managed very successful
businesses, and within those businesses
he creates systems that fuel dramatic
growth. The key to those systems
is the way Mark uses technology.
As my guest columnist this month,
Mark writes about creating opportunities
by being customer-centric.
Has
this ever happened to you? You
call a company for help on an
order you placed, and you’re
told, “I’m sorry.
You’ll have to talk with
your rep (or someone other than
the person on the phone). I can’t
help you or give you any information.”
These kinds of responses drive
me crazy, and I wanted to make
sure our customers would not have
to overcome service obstacles
like this.
When
you consider how hard we all work
to get the customer in the first
place and the wealth of technology
available today, none of us should
let this happen. We viewed this
issue as an opportunity to impress
our clients and give our staff
new tools to help them serve clients
better. You, too, probably have
all the information you need,
but it may not be readily available.
With a little creativity and some
knowledge about your clients—and
some programming—you can
win big in the customer service
arena.
We
took the information we already
had in our database and made it
very easy to access and use. We
call it One Call Resolution Satisfaction
(OCRS). That means that anyone
in our company who answers a phone
must have immediate access to
all customer information. So,
if our shipping department, accounting
staff or production workers answer
the phones, they don’t have
to transfer calls to help clients.
The goal should be immediate satisfaction
for the customer. “I can
help with that,” should
be the response.
Would
you drive your car without looking
at your dashboard, without considering
such information as your destination
vs. location (if you have a GPS
system), your speed and available
fuel? Whether your turn signal
is on? Remember, your customers
want the most accurate and up-to-date
information about the journey
their order is taking through
your company.
Having
customer dashboard management
is essential to great customer
service. This means that if the
customer can give you a partial
email address, a ZIP code, a first
or last name, an old invoice number,
a product number or any other
kind of identifying data, anyone
in your company can access the
customer’s order record
and status within seconds.
All
of our staff members can view
one screen and see exactly where
an order is in production at any
of our vendors. They can see exactly
what the job looks like (we display
.GIF images of all jobs). They
know the exact shipping date.
(Tracking numbers are visible
if the order is in route; images
of signatures are displayed if
the order has been delivered.)
They can see ALL communication
between the customer and our company
(emails and notes) as well as
any communications between the
manufacturing plant and us. Everything
is time-stamped and has a complete
audit trail of who did what.
It’s
incredibly impressive when you
have a customer on the phone and
you mention how sophisticated
the design of their piece is,
or, based on a quick look at their
file, you make a comment such
as, “Yes, we have upgraded
the shipping request you made
last Thursday to next-day air.”
We
even have dedicated computer screens
for all our customer service reps
that update every 15 seconds.
(Updates come from our vendors
via XML with the status of all
orders.) CSRs never have
to do anything to get the latest
information. The data changes
to red if something is not on
time to make promised ship dates.
This allows you to be proactive,
not reactive, when you’ve
made promises to clients.
Taking
advantage of today’s technologies
and improving your service level
this way is a big payback item
for your company. There is nothing
better than hearing customers
say you have a great company because
you really take care of them.
Timothy
J. Mehl, CDC, is CEO of Dispatch,
a manufacturer in Erie, Pa., and
DMIA’s president.
