On Customer Service
In this month's column, I'm going to recount a recent customer experience of mine. Most readers will be able to substitute any number of miserable customer service experiences, but I'm going use my experience with dealing with the Washington Post to illustrate ten lessons on how not to provide customer service.
Over a period of two days, our small company had a series of management meetings. I was in charge of the hiring of a new Senior Sales Representative. Through referrals, Craigslist, and other sources, we had already collected quite a few resumes, including several very promising candidates. However, the management team decided it would be better to cast a wider net. Unemployment is high, there is a lot of quality talent available, and we wanted to make sure we got the best candidate available. So the following week I was to put an ad in the Washington Post. It needed to run Sunday, so we could evaluate the resumes and make a decision. One week, plenty of time to get this done. Should be easy, right?
My first attempt was via the website. However, the process was a five step process, including a final step which was called "Apply Method". I'm not sure what that occurs during that step, since before I could get there I received the following helpful error:
We're sorry.
com.twp.ccss.exceptions.CCSSException: java.rmi.RemoteException: SOAP Fault:javax.xml.rpc.soap.SOAPFaultException:
[WLI-Core:489214]ProcessControl invocation failed[null]
Detail:
[WLI-Core:489214]ProcessControl invocation failed[null]
; nested exception is:
javax.xml.rpc.soap.SOAPFaultException:
[WLI-Core:489214]ProcessControl invocation failed[null]
caused by : java.rmi.RemoteException: SOAP Fault:javax.xml.rpc.soap.SOAPFaultException:
[WLI-Core:489214]ProcessControl invocation failed[null]
Detail:
[WLI-Core:489214]ProcessControl invocation failed[null]
; nested exception is:
javax.xml.rpc.soap.SOAPFaultException:
[WLI-Core:489214]ProcessControl invocation failed[null]
For additional information please call us at 202-334-4100.
Having been in the IT field, I can tell you that it appears that "Apply Method" means that is when the information is likely submitted to be saved to their database, but for most people that is as meaningless as the exception dump listed above. Useful to a programmer when testing, the details of the error message are useless to the average consumer. Their IT department needs to realize that the system is being built for the consumer, not other IT geeks.
Lesson 1: You need your company firing on all cylinders. Any aspect of your business that is misfiring is destroying the power of the rest. The Washington Post is fine newspaper that has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes, and I enjoy reading it. Having a website that doesn't work, means they are losing business. They need to be as good at business as they are at journalism.
I was already getting annoyed, since all I wanted was a pricing quote and I was already being asked to setup an account.
Lesson 2: Don't put up artificial barriers to customers. It's hard enough to make a sale, don't make it harder than it should be.
This required a large number of seemingly unnecessary, but required, fields. For example, a required field called "company size" makes me wonder: how is the being used? Does pricing for the same product and service change based on the size of the company? Will I get better service if we were large company? In addition, the Washington Post has decided that they way to make money online is to interrupt your viewing and place a full screen advertisement - fine, if I was trying to read their content for free - by why should I have put up with that annoyance when I'm trying to buy something from them?
Lesson 3: Creating a quality customer experience is critical to making sales on the web. In today's environment people are loath to part with all but essential information - it's both a security risk and a time waster. If they spent as much time reviewing the content of their website as they do the content of their newspaper, they would be much better off.
So I wrote to employmentads@washintonpost.com. Rather than an email response, I received a voicemail message from "Rob", who left a generic contact number. Several attempts trying to call Rob back were unsuccessful, as he was unavailable. This makes sense since he's a telemarketing sales person, and his job is to be on the phone. Around Wednesday, I called and simply asked for any sales person - I got Patrick. He gave me some pricing and options, and he requested I send an email with our job description to the generic email - apparently, the Washington Post doesn't give their employees their own phone extensions or even email addresses - and he would draft a sample employment posting. Rob did write back saying that he didn't have Microsoft Word 2007. Rather I needed to send it in MS Word 2003 format (note to the Washington Post: it is now 2009).
Lesson 4: It is important to give the right tools to your staff. In this day of age, not to have at least one computer with the latest software and not to give phone extensions or emails to your sales team is inexcusable. It certainly sends a message to your employees about how little the company values them and their time, not to mention the negative message it sends to your clients.
Our company can only afford the 10 line ad version, but I got talked into the 10 print ad combo with a 30 day on-line ad. So Friday comes, I begin to panic - the ad needs to run on Sunday, so I draft the advertisement myself. Finally, I get in touch with Rob. He had already drafted an ad for the weekend paper, just hadn't gotten around to getting back to me. He promised to send it, and we agreed that unless I get in touch with him about any concerns or changes, we'd print whatever he came up with (I didn't want to miss the deadline trying to track down Patrick, just to say it was OK). I told him I wanted to pay by credit card. I paid $420.25 for the online and one Sunday print and considered it done. The ad ran that Sunday.
So far, so good, at least for the print version. I am supposed to be able to update the online version. It's not until Monday that I receive information on how to access the online version, and due to the poor layout of the site, I have to ask (via the generic employementads@washingtonpost.com email address again), how to update the online ad (which initially only contained the abbreviated text that ran in print - not the complete job posting). It wasn't until later in the week that I received the information to be able to update the on-line version. I therefore missed the opportunity to catch print readers who might have wanted to go online to get more information.
Lesson 5: Communicate promptly and timely with your customers. If you can't get back to someone quickly, simply let them know and provide some status with a quick call or email. As an example, many on-line help request systems now generate an automatic response stating the time it normally takes to for a user receive a response. It acknowledges the request and sets expectations.
But the customer service saga doesn't end there. So I get a bill in the mail from the Washington Post which reads:
| Date | Description | SAU Size Billed Units | Time Run Rate | Gross Amount | Net Amount |
| 6/23 | Payment Credit Card | (296.25) | |||
| 6/23 | Payment Credit Card | (124.00) | |||
| Total Payments | (420.25) | ||||
| New Balance Forward | (420.25) | ||||
| 6/21 | SALES SR. SALES REPRESENT | SUN1@10LN | 395.00 | 395.00 | |
| PAJFRZ PAJUP SUN | |||||
| SO#0010841399 | |||||
| AUTH: DAVID OLENZAK | |||||
| SPACE DISC | |||||
| (98.75) | 296.25 | ||||
| 6/21 | SALES SR. SALES REPRESENT | SUN1@10LN | 225.00 | 225.00 | |
| TOPJOBFRZ TOPJBS SUN | |||||
| SO# 0010841399 | |||||
| AUTH: DAVID OLENZAK | |||||
| 225.00 | |||||
| 6/21 | SALES SR. SALES REPRESENT | SUN1@10LN | 25.00 | 250.00 | |
| JOBSFRZ 00000905 PG: H04 SUN | |||||
| SO# 0010842197 | |||||
| AUTH: DAVID OLENZAK | |||||
| ONLINE CHARGE - QTY | 60.00 | ||||
| DISCOUNT - TOTAL ORDER | (62.00) | ||||
| CAMPAIGN DISC | (124.00) | 124.00 | |||
| 6/21 | SALES SR. SALES REPRESENT | SUN1@10LN | 395.00 | 395.00 | |
| PAJFRZ PAJUP SUN | |||||
| SO# 0010842197 | |||||
| AUTH: DAVID OLENZAK | |||||
| SPACE DISC | (79.00) | 316.00 | |||
| ------ | |||||
| TOTAL CURRENT AD ACTIVITY | 961.25 | ||||
| TOTAL AMOUNT DUE | 541.00 |
Payment of all undisputed invoices is expected within Washington Post terms.
The problems with this bill are many - all that combine to make it virtually unintelligible. Much like insurance bills, because they are practically unreadable, it only provides to confuse and befuddle customers and clients. Especially disconcerting is the $541 in overcharges.
I'm not an accountant, but generally I would assume that any bill would be chronological. And therefore any "balance forward" would include a total of all the credits and debits from the past through a specific point in time. So why would I have a $420.25 credit balance forward, when those credits were applied on the 23rd, while the debits occurred on the 21st? Furthermore, why all the useless information? Riddling the bill with internal codes is pointless and confusing. After all a "PAJFRZ PAJUP SUN" is meaningless to me - and if it has some meaning to the Washington Post, I'm sure they have it on their system. If there is value to this code - perhaps translate it to something meaningful to me, such as "One time Sunday Post ad". I especially, like the disclaimer that "payment of all undisputed invoices is expected within Washington Post terms" (15 days after billing). Are the slamming me with unexpected charges, then if I don't dispute, claim that I implicitly approved the additional charges?
Lesson 6: Unless this is an intentional intent to deceive1, make your bill understandable. It benefits both the consumer and the company. Perhaps all the charges are valid, and if it was readable and understandable, perhaps I would pay them without having to call to get clarification. Imagine the nightmare this would be if I was a regular, repeat customer, with complex billing arrangements.
I took my mail home with me over the 4th of July weekend. Opening the bill on Saturday, I got frustrated and called the billing department, just to see if they were open. After being put on hold by an automated system, I held for 30 minutes and suspected I would have had to hold on until Monday morning when employees returned from their July 4th weekend.
Lesson 7: Communicate clearly and accurately to your customers. Beyond the billing, this extend to every touch point with the consumer. Simply putting a recording on the phone saying that the billing department was closed for the weekend is a small, low cost, easy way to make the customer experience less frustrating.
So I waited until Monday and called. I got a representative in the billing department, who had to put me on hold to ask some of his colleagues to decipher some of the billing codes. They claimed one of the two overcharges was a double billing and probably should be removed but that the second was legitimate and I owed the money. I told him I agreed for products and services that amounted to $420.25 and paid that. I did not authorize or want any additional services. He said I needed to speak to my sales representative. So I was transferred over to the general ad sales department where I was told "Patrick" was on another call and would call me back. It's been two weeks of calling and email, and I'm still waiting for that call. Meanwhile, I've received another bill showing a $541 "balance forward", indicating that the Accounts Payable department wasn't even authorized to remove the double billing. Couldn't the internal departments discuss the matter and resolve it, rather than having me do the inter-department communication myself? It has me wondering if relations between departments are so bad that the two departments aren't even talking to each other.
Lesson 8: Empower you employees. It seemed to be clear what happened. An order was placed on 6/21 for the services. Why would I only pay a partial order on 6/23? The bill instructed me to call the Accounts Payable with any questions. It is a reasonable expectation that they would fix the billing problem - rather than trying to push it back on me. If their procedure requires confirmation from the sales person, then they should do that - not me.
Bottom line, I paid ten times the cost for the Washington Post ad over Craigslist.com and the quality and quantity provided was no better. One of two things has happened. Either the Washington Post was used to charging exorbitant rates and haven't gone out to explore the competition and benchmarked against industry standards, or they have raised rates as clients declined - with the hope they can gouge the few customers that haven't shopped around. The Washington Post job section was all of four pages this Sunday - with the front page taken up with some articles. Three pages of ads. It used to be an entire supplement, around 30 pages large. This decline in business should be raising alarm bells among management. If they bothered to ask employees, look into the competition, or ask customers - they would likely quickly learn the sorry state of the product they provide. Instead, they are likely cursing the bad luck they are having, blaming external environmental factors such as the state of economy and encroaching on-line news sources. They can't change the external environmental factors, but they can change their product.
Lesson 9: Provide value for the money. Benchmark your service and pricing against the competition. You can charge more if there is additional value, or at least perceived value. If you are losing market share find out why, and fix it.
Fixing their customer service, re-pricing their product, or finding other ways to provide value would be start. But examining the business trends and things don't look good. More people are going on-line, and fewer newspapers are being sold. It pays to thing outside the box. Clearly for the Washington Post they are not good at providing job listings. So my suggestion would be to outsource that work. Couldn't they make a deal with a company like Monster.com that would both handle the process more smoothly, and allow cross selling? Companies that are clients of Monster could be sold print advertising for local jobs in Washington, DC and for national positions, and Washington Post clients could gain access to Monster's national listed board. The local Washington Post job section would be a local subset of the national Monster.com listing service. Obviously, this isn't the only solution, and with some thought there could be many more.
Lesson 10: Be creative, think outside the box. Be objective at looking at your products and services as well as trends in the industry. Adapt or die.
These lessons are simple and intuitive. One needs to take a careful look at their overall business, and especially their customer service experience.
I wish the best of luck to the Washington Post. As mentioned, it is a fine paper with thorough investigative journalism. If they were only as diligent with the rest of their business. Now, if you'll excuse me I'm off to read The-Common-Sense-Party.org online.
Editors note: The Washington Post was contacted in regards to this article and declined to comment.
1 The Washington Post is a large, publically traded company, and I do not believe the Washington Post would knowingly be involved in intentionally deceiving customers. However, there are companies that do intentionally mislead the consumer for their own financial gain. The most common practices are to send an official looking invoice which is really an offer to purchase goods or services, to hide within an agreement a contract to purchase additional products or services, and slamming - simply signing a consumer up for a product or service without their knowledge. In the last case, which is illegal, this may be done by a sales person simply looking to make commissions, without the company's knowledge. For example, I started noticing that I started to receive a "DIRECTV DVR Service" line item at a cost of $6.30 which turned out to be maintenance coverage for my DVR. It had a minimum one year contract and automatically renews. So in one year I would pay $75.60, probably close to the price of new unit. When I complained, they claim I called and authorized the service and gave me a date that I was out of town. After fighting it, I was given 6 months with a six dollar credit - half the amount. I gave up and resigned myself to be stuck with the service.
