Recently I had a terrible experience with a large ecommerce
company in India – that shook my faith in the company. To make the long story the
company cancelled 3 of my orders each with a value of over Rs.20K a week after I
placed the orders. I also received the wrong product for my 4th
order and the company asked me to duke it out with the seller of the product
(marketplace order) – who called me and blamed the ecommerce company. Their customer service reps at the company were
just unable to help me and were unwilling to escalate to anyone who could help.
Disappointed with this company, I placed the orders with an international
ecommerce company known for its customer experience. As luck would have it,
they also cancelled both of my orders immediately after I placed the order.
However the difference was that they cancelled the orders immediately and once
I called up their customer service, they got their act together and took great
care of things. At the end of it I am still delighted because of the way they
handled the problem. This grew my trust in the company even more – I know that
even if something wrong happens, the company will take care of the issue.
This got me reflecting on why some companies are so much
better at taking care of customers than others. I know if you talk to the head
of any company in the consumer internet space he or she totally wants to
delight customers and build a culture of customer centricity. Therefore it is
not a lack of desire or effort in top management. It certainly is also not the
Indian culture - several companies run great customer service teams that are
based out of India. What then does it take to create a culture of customer
centricity?
In my opinion there are three things that go into building a
strong customer oriented fabric in the company.
- Always make trade-offs in favour of the customer
- Measure and reward customer experience improvements over other metrics
- Empower the front line – the customer service reps
Consistently make trade-offs
in favour of the customer
Every company that I have worked for in the past years touts
customer experience as one of their core values. It is sometimes written in
bold letters throughout the corridors of the office. The leaders talk about how
important customer experience is for the success of the company. However when a
trade-off has to be made between customer experience and a business result such
as revenue companies often make the decision that improves the latter. Customer
experience in companies is paramount so long as it does not conflict with other
business objectives. This behaviour sends a strong signal to the rank and file
about what the company truly cares about.
Having worked at the international e-commerce company earlier,
I know that the company consistently made trade-offs in favour of the customer even
if it meant taking a hit on other metrics. The company’s priority on customer
experience was clear to each and every one in the organization – not because it
was written on a wall but because the leaders consistently made those calls.
Measure and reward customer
experience over other metrics
This is a direct outcome of the previous point but deserves
a deeper dive. All companies measure and reward metrics. What you measure and
reward is key in determining the DNA of the company. Most ecommerce companies obsess over revenue
and conversion metrics sometimes even on an hourly basis. (In my opinion
conversion is not a good metric but I will save that discussion for a different
post). But the leadership reviews customer experience metrics much less
frequently - perhaps once a quarter? It is also not as top of the mind of the
leaders as revenue or sales is.
Do people in the company get rewarded for driving customer
experience even if it adversely impacts other metrics such as revenue? Are the
customer experience metrics foremost in the minds of the leaders? Does the leadership truly believe that
improving customer experience will benefit in the long term and can they afford
to take such a long term view of the business? The fact is that companies usually reward performance
that drives top line or margin growth even if it results in a deteriorated
customer experience - but someone who improves customer experience at the cost
of revenue or margin is usually shot down.
In the international company that I had a pleasant
experience with, the key metrics tracked were the things customers really cared
about – selection, prices, and customer experience (which can be broken down
into sharper metrics). These were holier than the top line or margin metrics
and the leaders used these metrics to get their teams aligned to focus on the
customer.
Empower the front
line (customer service rep)
Anyone who has ever worked at an ecommerce company knows
that sometimes - despite best efforts and intentions - things go wrong. But how
do you delight the customer even after something has gone wrong? How do you
restore their trust in your company?
In the case of the international company, the customer
service person was empowered to make decisions and followed up diligently with
me and internally in the company until my order was delivered.
In contrast customer reps at most companies are seldom empowered
(beyond offering a token goodwill credit). They are ready to read out the
company policy and give facts– but they are not empowered to make things happen
to take care of the customers. When things went wrong with our order at the
Indian company, we made several calls to the call centre where every agent would
just ask to repeat the facts again. The agents were reluctant to escalate to
the superiors – it felt like the escalations would reflect negatively on them.
The customer service reps are at the receiving end of every
defect that company creates. Therefore it is important to empower them to take
care of the issues and also give them an easy way to escalate if they lack the
authority. If we have not empowered the rep, we cannot penalize the rep for
escalations. During my experience at the ecommerce company where I had a poor
experience I found that even people handling escalations were not empowered (“I
need to check with management”; “it will take me 24 hours to get their approval”
etc.) and lacked diligent follow up (“I will call you in the next two hours”
but they never called back).
Below is a simple example of a simple process at the international
company. While the example is a small one it illustrates how that company has
created a great culture of customer experience. Multiply such policies and
processes by a thousand and you’ve got great customer experience.
The customer service reps at the company are empowered to
take any product off the website if they get customer complaints about the
product and believe that the product is defective or its description is inaccurate.
It would be the category team’s responsibility to get the product fixed and get
it back on the shelf. There were clear instructions – the customer service reps
would not be reprimanded even if they incorrectly took a product off the shelf.
The company diligently measured how many products were removed from the shelf (measuring
customer defects and would prioritize reduction of these). The company was totally
willing to take a hit on sales of any product (even very popular ones) if it
was causing customer defects (prioritized customer experience over
revenue).
With pressures of revenue and growth none of this is easy.
It requires taking a really long term view of the business which most leaders
do not have the luxury to take. That is why despite strong top management desire
- most companies are unable to create a culture of customer centricity.
I would love to hear what others in the industry have to say
about my experience and observations. As I work on building my own company (www.simplotel.com) I would like to create a
DNA that cares about the customer and am very eager to learn from others on how
to accomplish this.
