I have a friend and occasional wise sage of business who says we provide Customer Service that is too good. This got me to thinking, is it possible to provide customer service that is too good?? Can it be that by constantly trying to go "above and beyond" for our customers we are not helping them to help themselves??
I know that for me personally I value customer service very highly. I am one of those people that will not tip if the service in a restaurant has not been as I believe it should be. I get infuriated when left hanging by some outsourced call centre, whatever the location, or I get to talk to some disembodied voice that I can tell does not give a damn about my account. And I get even more annoyed if I think we have let a customer down. But is this going too far?
In our job we get the "privilege" of working with some of the largest names in IT and IT consultancy and it always astounds us that the level of service they provide to their customers is sometimes shockingly bad. But by dint of the fact that they are a "Big Name" they get away with it. Don't get me wrong, we make mistakes occasionally as we are human, but we always have an in depth enquiry afterwards to try to ensure it does not happen again. But these larger organisations don't seem to have the same fear of poor customer service that we do. I can tell you absolute horror stories of call centres and voice-mail systems.
If their server goes down they get round to fixing it, in time. They then tell everybody else to rush to resend the messages they didn't receive or lost. The other day I was called to a meeting by a customer. The meeting was to explain what we were doing about all the server outages that we have experienced in the last two weeks, not our outages but the big expensive consultancy firms outages. This big consultancy firm was offering no explanation or apology, just a warning that our customers messages were delayed and they should stop this happening. But it was the big consultancy firms servers that were the problem!!! They should know how to stop the problem, fix your damn servers. But we are the ones being asked what we are doing to stop the outages. Go figure.
But I still think that you cannot provide customer service that is too good. Yes I try to ensure we over specify servers and back-ups and comms. But I still fret that we have not got enough, that we might let a customer down. We try to ensure we won't, put systems in to try to prevent it, but I still worry.
And I am glad I do, and we do as a company, because I would like to think that if I was a customer I would be happy to, metaphorically, pay that 20% gratuity for good service. Because I would like to think that our customers are treated as I would like to be treated. It cannot be wrong to strive to be the best, to try to do the best for someone paying you to do a job.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Complexities of EIPP or EDI make it prime for Outsourcing
Last week I had a review of our mapping process with our lead data mapper. Ken is a man of over 20 years experience in the EDI and data mapping world. He has contributed to international EDI standards and even written a standard for the Paper industry. He knows what he is talking about. He is also a strange being who delights in the minutiae of data mapping and he enjoys nothing better than solving the problems inherent in getting one computer system to talk to another.
We were looking, as we do on a regular basis, at how we could improve the mapping process, automate more and therefore offer a better service for our customers, which of course leads to better profit. One thing we homed in on was the number of different mappings we have created for our customers and their partners.
Having looked at that number, we then looked at the number of standards available that users either are or could use. The numbers are staggering. In EDI in the UK and Europe we mainly see Tradacoms and EDIFACT. Of course there are various versions of each and in particular with EDIFACT one persons EDIFACT D96a order is not the same as another persons.
We then looked at XML, once touted as the great hope for simplifying EDI. Over 500 standards, and a lot of the standards are varied by the end user.
We then looked at ways we send and receive messages, 10 basic methods (AS2, EDI VAN, FTP, email etc) and most FTPs have slightly different requirements (e.g. do we delete the file when download or archive it) and HTTPS is different for each user we implement for.
Now we actually enjoy all this variety but we then thought about users, not our users, but users that were trying to implement EDI themselves. Don't get me wrong, we do not do anything our users could not do for themselves BUT the question is at what cost. Given the variety of message standards and comms methods around your average customer that either buys or supplies goods to and from various parties will need at least one, more likely two specialist to handle any significant EDI initiative.
If they have an IT department the skills may be present but here's the question. If you business is buying, selling, manufacturing or distributing widgets do you want your IT team spending their time trying to integrate with one of your trading partners or do you want them to concentrate on adding value to your core business activities? Integrated EDI will add to your bottom line, but not if it is diverting you and your team from your main business.
This is where the value of outsourced EDI can be found. Firstly does EDI make sense for your business. We do a simple activity based costing exercise with some of our customers to identify when EDI will add to their bottom line. Once this is done we can then look at the costs of "Do it yourself" against outsourced EDI. For any significant EDI program, outsourcing wins easily.
A friend of mine in the pub on Friday asked me why I don't do DIY at home. My answer was simple, I know what I am good at, and DIY isn't one of those things. When I did try DIY in the past I would find I would have to buy tools and materials, most of which I would never use again and then I would have to pay someone else to correct what I have done anyway, so there is no saving. The same should apply in business, do what you are good at, and leave the nasty world of EDI to someone that enjoys it, it will save you money.
We were looking, as we do on a regular basis, at how we could improve the mapping process, automate more and therefore offer a better service for our customers, which of course leads to better profit. One thing we homed in on was the number of different mappings we have created for our customers and their partners.
Having looked at that number, we then looked at the number of standards available that users either are or could use. The numbers are staggering. In EDI in the UK and Europe we mainly see Tradacoms and EDIFACT. Of course there are various versions of each and in particular with EDIFACT one persons EDIFACT D96a order is not the same as another persons.
We then looked at XML, once touted as the great hope for simplifying EDI. Over 500 standards, and a lot of the standards are varied by the end user.
We then looked at ways we send and receive messages, 10 basic methods (AS2, EDI VAN, FTP, email etc) and most FTPs have slightly different requirements (e.g. do we delete the file when download or archive it) and HTTPS is different for each user we implement for.
Now we actually enjoy all this variety but we then thought about users, not our users, but users that were trying to implement EDI themselves. Don't get me wrong, we do not do anything our users could not do for themselves BUT the question is at what cost. Given the variety of message standards and comms methods around your average customer that either buys or supplies goods to and from various parties will need at least one, more likely two specialist to handle any significant EDI initiative.
If they have an IT department the skills may be present but here's the question. If you business is buying, selling, manufacturing or distributing widgets do you want your IT team spending their time trying to integrate with one of your trading partners or do you want them to concentrate on adding value to your core business activities? Integrated EDI will add to your bottom line, but not if it is diverting you and your team from your main business.
This is where the value of outsourced EDI can be found. Firstly does EDI make sense for your business. We do a simple activity based costing exercise with some of our customers to identify when EDI will add to their bottom line. Once this is done we can then look at the costs of "Do it yourself" against outsourced EDI. For any significant EDI program, outsourcing wins easily.
A friend of mine in the pub on Friday asked me why I don't do DIY at home. My answer was simple, I know what I am good at, and DIY isn't one of those things. When I did try DIY in the past I would find I would have to buy tools and materials, most of which I would never use again and then I would have to pay someone else to correct what I have done anyway, so there is no saving. The same should apply in business, do what you are good at, and leave the nasty world of EDI to someone that enjoys it, it will save you money.
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