Colligan hired a public relations firm to help identify opportunities for getting Champion Windows noticed in positive ways. He took the Better Business Bureau’s Excellence in Customer Service course. Then he began to reshape the organization so that communication and follow-up were present at every point of contact with the customer. It took about a year to implement a customer service plan.
The idea was that employees should think like customers. “You have to continually train people to have empathy,” Colligan says, whether they’re taking an inbound call, scheduling an appointment, running the lead, or managing the project. In 2009 and 2010, Champion Windows in Colorado Springs was presented with the Excellence in Customer Service Award by the local BBB.
HELLO STRANGER Experts say that developing a customer service plan, and a culture of customer service, begins with an analysis of the customer life cycle. The next step is to define and plot out what Bliss calls the “moments of truth” that determine the way that customer perceives your company. When she worked for Land’s End, the retailer identified 200 moments of truth. But, Bliss says, in any business, there will be at least 15 key interactions with the customer that are “super-critical” in shaping their perception of the company. Clear communication allows all parties to be aware of what’s going on as it happens and to resolve any issues before they develop. “Don’t wait for them to tell you that you dropped the ball,” Bliss says. “Know ahead of them. Put follow-up measures in place and establish performance indicators.”
For Pinto, the key was to keep Pinnacle Energy customers in the loop. Prior to that, the company received a signed contract, the office called the homeowner when the windows were ordered, and then called again two days before installation to let the homeowner know that a crew would be there. Once the contract was signed, homeowners never saw their sales rep again. Crew leaders collected the last check or arranged for homeowners to sign a completion certificate. Once the job was closed out, communication with that homeowner was minimal to nonexistent. The company’s referral business was less than 5%.
That sounds about right to Mark Richardson of Case Design/Remodeling, in Maryland. Richardson, a speaker and writer on remodeling practices, has long advocated that home improvement companies could profit significantly by adapting the customer care practices of full-service companies to their business model. “The biggest mistake the specialty guys make,” he says, “is that they allow their clients to become strangers.”
Pinto calls his program Touch Points. What he discovered as he began to implement it three years ago was that “the more you communicate with [homeowners], the more they think: ‘Wow, you guys are really keeping me in the loop.’”
“In the loop” in this case means eight separate “touch points” in the course of the customer cycle where someone from Pinnacle Energy — in administration, marketing, sales, or production — communicates by phone, text, or email with the homeowner. The idea is to let the customer know where things are at in the process and what the next step will be. Those contacts need to be regular, frequent, and brief: “Just an update,” Pinto says, “not a 10-minute conversation.”
No one knows better where those touch points might be than your employees. Geist suggests that the best way to create a customer service system is to have employees design it by suggestion. “Put them in a room and say: ‘Look, this is the target. This is what we need to do. I need your help with this.’ Then let them talk.” It’s also the best way to implement a plan because employees may resist taking on what they feel is extra work.
“The people who work for you are harder to engage than your customers,” Geist says. “But they’re the face of your brand. They’re either ambassadors, or assassins.”
REDEFINED ROLES Home improvement companies looking to implement a customer service plan find it’s just about impossible to do that without making someone responsible for it. But who? For instance, few companies require salespeople to follow-up with homeowners once the job is sold, or to revisit the job either in progress or when it’s completed. What owners such as Pinto found was that salespeople would much rather move on to their next appointment than spend time on the phone or revisiting past customers. But without those contacts, customers soon resume being strangers.
