Learning lessons from poor performers

Customer relationships suffer when companies adopt an internal focus

Recently I flew the regional airline that has the worst record in the industry for late departures. The experience reminded me that one can learn some valuable lessons about customer service—usually what not to do—from poor performers.

Picture a gate being used by a regional airline at Boston’s Logan airport. It is snowing outside and the gate area is full and chaotic. In fact, it is standing room only due to canceled and delayed flights.

The fortunate few
Now picture a large oasis, a roped-off space about half the size of the gate area, in the middle of this bedlam. The fortunate few who are within the oasis are enjoying white rocking chairs, plenty of seats, tables and food.

You might ask, who had these privileges? Were they frequent flyers redeeming bonuses? Perhaps they were passengers being compensated for suffering the most severe inconvenience.

No, the people enjoying the oasis were employees of the airline. Right in the middle of a cramped gate area with not enough seats, they took care of their own. They made sure their flight attendants and pilots would have would have a good experience even if their passengers did not.

When a company thinks more about itself than its customers, as is clearly the case in our example, the company is internally focused. Interestingly, struggling organizations are likely to become more internally focused than customer focused.

Questions needing answers
Likewise, with all the challenges facing the newspaper industry, how many newspaper organizations are becoming internally focused? How many are spending too much time making things better for themselves while forgetting the subscriber? In the style of comedian Jeff Foxworthy and his “You Might Be A Redneck” routine, I’ve created a list that can help answer these questions.


You might be internally focused if…

…a subscriber looks up your main customer service number and gets a recording that says, right off the bat, “If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now.”

…it has been so long since you called your own customer service number that you don’t know what the recording says.

…you overhear your customer service people saying, “You should have called in by 10:30 this morning to get your paper re-delivered.”

…your supervisors are too busy with internal meetings and email to sit down and coach your low-performing customer service reps.

…you don’t know who your low-performing reps are.

…you don’t keep track of how many subscribers are canceling each day.

…you don’t know the saves rate on these cancellation calls by rep.

…you spend most of your new-hire training time teaching reps how to deal with circulation software instead of how to provide world-class customer service.

…you and your managers and supervisors are too busy with internal meetings to return subscribers’ calls.

Not a laughing matter
While Jeff Foxworthy is going for laughs with his routine, there’s nothing funny about the consequences of a newspaper—or any other business—being internally focused. In an industry experiencing circulation decline and paradigm shift, it has never been more important for newspaper organizations to ask yourselves whether or not you’re customer focused. If the answer is yes, the next step is to get even better at it. If the answer is no, it’s time for a change. Based on my experience with major newspapers across the country, the return on your investment of time, money and human resources in such improvement or change will be substantial.

Straightforward approach pays high dividends

I was delighted to serve as a major source for this trade article on InlandPress.org and was quoted extensively on the subject of how “Improving customer service starts at the top and pays huge dividends.”

No 'magic' – just commitment to serve
Wednesday, March 07, 2007 By Randy Craig | Editor, rcraig@inlandpress.org

Jon Louder, circulation director at the Mitchell (S.D.) Daily Republic, believes in the power of customer service. He shares a familiar axiom uttered by many over the years: A newspaper might boast Pulitzer Prize-winning news, but if the service is lousy, it will lose circulation. The converse is also true.

"You can have a mediocre paper, but if you have really great service, you'll probably gain circulation. This should magnify to everybody how important customer service is," he said.

Louder said the Republic is not perfect, but service has been good enough to keep the 12,000-circulation paper growing in a shrinking market. No magic bullets exist, he admitted. But years at the Republic have provided him some insight.

"There's no magic. Just focus," he said. "You have to focus on improving customer service every day. It's just getting employees and carriers to buy into it."

Louder's approach illustrates much about newspaper customer service. Everyone understands customer service is important. But how many realize its tremendous impact on readership and, potentially, circulation?

The most exhaustive examination of the effect of customer service on newspapers originated in the Impact Study of Newspaper Readership published by the Readership Institute in 2000. The study, which surveyed 37,000 consumers across the United States, determined that the greatest potential for improving newspaper readership came from raising customer service to the "exceptional" level.

Broken down, these service factors rank highest in terms of their impact on readership:

* condition and completeness of the paper
* quality of paper, ink and typesize
* when and how the paper is delivered
* accuracy of the bill
* cost of home delivery
* overall customer service

A newspaper's customer service strategy does not have to be complex to be effective. The primary element of any strategy is commitment. The initiative has to be ingrained in the culture.

Louder said customer service starts at the top with Publisher Noel Hamiel. Everyone at the Republic from Hamiel on down understands they are there to serve the customer. Of course, this attitude must be instilled in carriers, Louder said. District managers must clearly outline expectations.

"It may be time-consuming, but it's a necessity," he said.

Commitment must be to the right thing, warned Bob Davis, a circulation consultant based in Alpharetta, Ga. He said the overriding customer service mistake newspapers make is confusing efficiency with effectiveness.

Davis, whose clients have included Morris Communications properties, USA Today and the Miami Herald, said newspapers should not obsess over call time. Instead, they should concern themselves with metrics based on quality, not speed-metrics such as inbound saves rate, first-time resolution, service error followup or conversion to EZ Pay.

"There should be a drive toward having a quality conversation rather than a quick, get-them-off the phone conversation," he said. Commitment also involves training, Davis said. Customer service reps need to continually refine their skills with training and feedback. Motorola conducted an internal study that found that every dollar spent on supervisors coaching customer service reps returned $33 to the enterprise, according to Davis. At most newspapers, the employee charged with supervising customer service reps has as many as 22 tasks to perform any given day and spends only about 30 minutes engaged with the reps.

"Yet, (supervisors) readily admit that their No. 1 priority is coaching," Davis said. "But with all these other things they have to do, they end up with 22 different hats to wear."

One simple step trainers can take, Davis said, is to analyze how reps respond to a call. More than half of all customer service calls to newspapers are complaints. Yet, almost no matter what customers say, the first words they hear from a rep are "May I have your phone number please?" The first step must be to show empathy and issue an apology, Davis said.

"Start developing a rapport," he said. "We've become so task-oriented as opposed to people-oriented."

The payoff for coaching can prove tremendous. Davis said anywhere from 22 percent to 45 percent of a typical newspaper's circulation will call in to cancel over the course of a year. Newspapers should be able to recover 50 percent of these requests for cancellation, he said. The industry average for saving stops is around one in five, according to Newspaper Association of America. Part of the difficulty is determining the real cause for the cancellation. The top complaint is delivery problems. The No. 2 complaint is the familiar "no time to read." Davis said reps need to drill down past this excuse. He said in 53 percent of these cases there is a second reason prompting the cancellation. And in 80 percent of those cases, the second reason is the real reason the customers want to cancel.

Newspapers can tackle incremental changes in customer service like these or they can consider changes on a grander scale like the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C.

After moving to a distributor-based system, the paper found that complaints dropped significantly, said Leon Barrineau, administrative manager in the circulation department. Instead of handling more than 500 carriers, the newspaper just had to deal with 20-plus distributors who hired their own delivery forces. Complaints wentto the distributors, not the paper, and carriers were divorced from bill collections.

With the lack of service calls coming in, the customer service department came to be overstaffed, Barrineau said. The paper decided to completely outsource its customer service.

As employees left through attrition, none were replaced. For those that remained, management found them other jobs at the paper. One employee left voluntarily.

The Post and Courier then contracted with the McClatchy Co.'s Customer Care Center (C3) located at The State, Columbia, S.C., to handle customer service calls.

Since the Post and Courier pays C3 on a per-call basis, the newspaper benefits from decreased call volume. To keep call volume down, the paper drives as many complaints and service requests as possible to www.charleston.net, its Web site. Customers can manage subscriptions here thanks to some basic tools found in the paper's circulation software from Data Sciences Inc. (DSI).

"The more Internet activity you have, the more automatic drafts that you do, the better customer service in the field, the better relationship distributors have with the customer-all of that plays into decreasing the phone volume," he said.

While the Post and Courier tops 95,000 circulation, Barrineau believes its strategy can work for both smaller and larger papers.

The online account access for subscribers is a "no-brainer" that can improve customer service at any paper, he said. But to substantially improve customer service, newspapers would likely need more people working more hours. Newspapers have to determine if they can generate enough business to justify the additional staffing, Barrineau said. If they cannot, then outsourcing might be an option if the transition is made with care.

"If you don't do it right, it can be gut-wrenching and can really upset your organization. But if you do it right and handle it tenderly, it can be a real success story," he said.

Outsourcing customer service remains a more complex solution than others. Louder at the Republic prefers attitudinal adjustments over anything else. Customer service is one of the things he can control at his paper. He can't control the news or what inserts will appear. But he can control the service customers receive.

"I've realized that in my years as a circulation employee, when it comes down to it the only thing you have complete control over is service," he said. "So that's what you focus on."

Contacts:
Jon Lauder, (605) 996-5514
Bob Davis, (678) 455-6812
Leon Barrineau, (843) 853-7678

Quick Tips: Customer Service Tips

* It might go without saying but when given a second chance, a newspaper must make good on its promise. Re-delivery must come through without mistakes.

* After a circulation problem has been resolved, offer the subscriber a coupon good for 5 days' credit the next time they renew their subscription. Include a personal note from the district manager or circulation manager. Show your concern.

* Don't be afraid to replace ineffective carriers.

* Always find out exactly what the problem or issue is with the subscriber. Always ask if there are other issues.

* Subscribers are more likely to respond favorably to a customer service rep if that rep shows a genuine interest in the subscriber. Ask the caller what his of her favorite section is. By tapping into the reader's emotional attachment to the paper, this question can shift the tone of the conversation toward the positive.

© 2007 Inland Press Association/Inland Press Foundation

Finally, you can outsource your retention calls without compromising quality

Win back more subscribers with a proven, customer-centered approach

Thousands of subscriptions for U.S. newspapers are stopped each day because of non-payment. Newspaper companies have tried to save as many of these cancellations as possible, but they've had no effective way to outsource their outbound retention calling. Until now.

Win-win approach

Robert C. Davis and Associates, known for generating millions of dollars for USA TODAY, the San Francisco Chronicle, Morris Communications, and many other clients with its approach to training and coaching in-house call center teams, presents a win-win way to outsource this critical job with world-class results.

Newspaper industry specialists

Garden-variety outsourcers do not have the specialized expertise required to produce your desired results in customer service, retention and sales. We do, and that's why we established SURPASS, a unique call center operation in Bedford, New Hampshire, built and staffed based on the principles we apply every day for our clients' in-house teams.

A growing number of high-profile newspaper clients are working with SURPASS. They include the San Francisco Chronicle, USA TODAY, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Orlando Sentinel, the Birmingham News and the Buffalo News. They've signed on based on the SURPASS team's strong track record and proven methodology.

The power of experience and the quality conversation

Everyone on the SURPASS team has extensive experience in having quality conversations with subscribers who desire to quit. Our supervisory and telephone personnel have received extensive training and coaching on a robust sales model and call flow that have been proven time after time to win subscribers back.

SURPASS's robust call flow

1. Greeting
Enthusiasm, assurance of help from the start, clarity of purpose

2. Discovery
Listening, understanding the subscriber's wants, interests, needs and the true reason he or she has fallen into grace

3. Solution
Striking a chord with the subscriber based on what we've discovered

4. Offer
Helping the subscriber respond positively to our solution

5. Close
Winning the save with assumptive selling

Coaching for mastery

The call flow is shown here in summary form. It takes a significant level of training, coaching and on-the-job application to master it. Our supervisors receive call flow training and coaching until they become masters at demonstrating the call flow. This equips them for what is one of the most important elements of their job: being out on the floor coaching their reps.

One-call resolution

The key to success on many retention calls is fixing the problem. Our retention operation has processes in place that allow us to work for you as a one-call resolution center. We work this way because a newspaper should never take the chance that it will lose an at-risk subscriber by asking him or her to call back for customer service.

References

For candid outside assessments of RCDA and SURPASS, feel free to request reference contact information by email or call Bob Davis at 678-455-6812.

About Bob Davis

RCDA president and SURPASS co-founder Bob Davis is an expert in training and coaching for customer retention and sales in customer contact centers.

His long track record of successes with RCDA and with a national training and consulting organization spans more than 25 years.

Read Bob's complete bio at www.robertcdavis.net.

About Ken Nemcovich

Before joining SURPASS, call center expert Ken Nemcovich worked for America Online (AOL). His call center work at AOL saved the company $9 million, reduced credit by $22 million and identified $90 million in cost reductions. He raised retention rates from 15 percent to 63 percent, and boosted revenue by $5 million.

Ken brings the techniques that worked for AOL to the table for SURPASS, and he has generated similar results for our clients.

Let's begin the partnership.

When it comes to your retention calling efforts, dial in a dramatic improvement. Partner up with SURPASS.

Robert C. Davis and Associates, Inc.
SURPASS
103 Smith Forest Lane
Alpharetta, GA 30004
tel: 678-455-6812
cell: 678-548-1775
www.robertcdavis.net
bob@robertcdavis.net