I'm home sick with a flu of some sort. Its been knocking me out and I've been trying to work a bit through it but its been hard. With that context, consider this scenario:
There is a place in Manassas, VA where I live called the Flower Gallery. The quality of the flowers they provide is incredibly high quality. Great flowers. But......there is a big but here (no, jeez). Because I'm sick its pretty unlikely I'm going to be unable to go to Arlington VA tomorrow (about 25 miles away) and give these flowers to my 92 year old mom for Valentine's Day. My wife has a broken arm so she can't drive at the moment either. My mom can't come because she is in an assisted living facility for a reason. So we called the Flower Gallery and asked if at this late date could they possibly deliver? We would have paid a premium - but they never knew that because they (politely) said "not a chance." I could understand that if they had known it was Arlington, VA but they didn't even bother to ask ANY questions AT ALL to find out if the circumstance merited something. We've bought flowers at premium prices there for years - though they don't know that - because they don't have enough information to let them know that. We haven't paid for the flowers yet, they have no credit card, but because we believe in holding up our end of the bargain - I'm going out while sick and get the flowers and pay them for them and try to bring them to my mom on the first day that I'm well enough to do so. Just not Valentines Day tomorrow.
I could understand it if they had asked questions and said, "that's just too far" but for all they know I was asking them to deliver the flowers to the CVS next store or the residences across the street. They didn't spend ANY time with any concern. That's the problem. Not the refusal. The unwillingness to help me solve any problem because they were unwilling to listen to their customer.
I want you to contrast this with something far more difficult and far more complex. I'm going to provide you with a story in his own voice from Tien Tzuo - CEO of Zuora - and how they dealt with a customer problem February 1 - SuperBowl Sunday. For those of you who don't know Tien - you should. He is one of the best people in the IT world - the former Chief Strategy Officer of salesforce.com, a real live human being and now the CEO of the SaaS-delivered billing and payments company - Zuora - highly successful Zuora. You'll see why when you read this.
"Paul, as an avid reader of your blogs, I know you are always on the lookout for good stories about how companies act when they put customers first.
Here's our story.A quick background: you wrote about my company, Zuora, a few weeks back. We provide a SaaS billing and payments platform. Billing, as it turns out, is a critical interaction point between our clients and their customers. If the bills are wrong, customers aren't happy, and our clients look bad. In other words, our clients are trusting us to make them look good -- which doesn't leave a lot of room for error on our part.
Putting customers first, then, isn't just good business practice for us. It's something that needs to be embedded in our corporate DNA. In fact, our corporate values statement actually calls for us to be our customers' friend. Our employees aspire to be, in their own words, a "kick-ass, friendly" team. We even have an ongoing, internal project called "Project BFF" to ensure that we live up to our values.
This was recently put to the test when we found an error (ugh) in our billing system. In creating an enhancement for one customer, we accidentally introduced extra zero-dollar line items for other customers. Realizing that friends don't let friends down, our engineering and support team worked through the weekend to make sure we fixed the issue -- so that bills being sent out on Monday would be perfect. The fact that it was SuperBowl weekend didn't deter us -- we knew we had to fix things before the weekend was over, and thankfully, we did.
What surprised me is the resulting email I received from the CEO of one of our customers on Monday. He was thankful, yes. But, what he really wanted to know was: how did I get the Zuora team to work through the weekend - SuperBowl weekend, no less!
I have to say, I found myself at a loss for words. To our team, working over the weekend for our customers, through the night, whatever it takes - is something we take for granted. Friends support each other. Friends don't let friends down. Friends make each other look good.
In any company that is running hard and fast, like we are, it's easy to get myopic and focus on yourself -- your product, your colleagues, your missing. But in the end, your only as good as your customer think you are. And as for the SuperBowl, well, there's always Tivo!"
Compare and contrast this one when it comes to your CRM strategy and you're a small business or a growing company or a struggling company or even an enterprise. I'd say the solution and the committments of the Zuorans was exemplary wouldn't you? Sad to say, Flower Gallery had a lot simpler service issue and they blew it. No Tivo for them. Ultimately, if your business is customer centric you're going to interact with the customer in a way that satisfies his or her personal agenda. You have to so that you can derive benefit from the interaction. In the case of Zuora, the benefits will be there. In the case of the Flower Gallery, they've lost a customer or two.
Couldn't help but think of a favorite expression of mine as I read the Flower Gallery and earlier United vignettes; "always look for and assume the good first, not the bad". While I've used that mostly around people management philosophy's, it struck me that, just as United did by looking at the facts as they saw them, and no doubt followed by the Flower Gallery employee, the first reaction was to assume the bad. A "bad or declining customer" because of recent mileage activity, a "bad customer" about to make an unreasonable demand for a delivery, instead of looking for the good. Imagine the difference in reactions if these service providers assumed the good first; a customer that WILL be flying more often, a regular customer about to pay a premuim for a premuim service.
As always, it isn't systems or technologies or metrics, or whatevers that fail, it's the people and the mindset and the change management around CRM. CRM isn't a "thing", it's a way of life for some (organizations), and a concept out of reach for others.
Posted by: steve olyha | February 19, 2009 at 03:55 PM
Paul - thanks for sharing the story from Zuora, clearly a company that is miles ahead of the crowd...I've spent the last 5 years in the CRM space, specifically in customer service software with companies such as Kana and Talisma (now nGenera) - and what never ceases to amaze me is the unfortunate 'leap' that most companies make when deploying a CRM system. There is a perception that the system itself will improve customer service - thus, little to no attention is given to modifying internal processes! Much like your example of the Flower Gallery, the real issue is the process, not the existence (or lack of) of a system that understands the customer's buying history. The employee was not trained in providing 'customer service' resulting in a lost opportunity and customer for the business...if we can highlight more and more examples like Zuora, the message has a much better chance of getting out sooner rather than later - customer service and CRM are not systems, they are ways of thinking!
Posted by: Anand Chopra | February 18, 2009 at 02:42 AM