The ISPs Guide to Customer Service
an
ISP eBook
contents] [
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
This content was adapted from [Link]'s ISP-Planet and eCommerce-Guide Web sites. Contributors: Jason Zigmont, Jim Marsh, Nelson King, Michelle Megna, and Kevin Beauchamp.
2 4
Keeping Your Customers
Jason Zigmont
Taking Care of CLEC Customers
Jim Marsh
6 8 10
Spit Happens
Jason Zigmont
Pamper Your Customers
Nelson King
Chatting Your Way to Success with Live Support
Michelle Megna
10
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
Keeping Your Customers
By Jason Zigmont
orny as it may sound, as an ISP your middle name is , "service." Good service is critical to retaining customers which, in turn, are critical to attracting new ones. It's a fact: Most ISPs report that the largest number of new users comes from referrals and only happy customers will refer new ones to you.
uptime, busy signals, throughput, and many other technical issues.
Keep Yourself Honest
The hardest part of providing technically superior service is in measuring it a prerequisite to figuring out what needs to be changed. Do you know how many busy signals you have? What is your user-to-modem ratio? Do you know how many dropped calls you have during busy times? Do you know what your uptime is? Do you know what your Internet access capacity usage is?
Jupiterimages
The term "Quality of Service" (QoS), has undergone an evolution from a descriptive phrase, to a quantifiable attribute of what you, as an ISP, sell to your customers. QoS is usually expressed in a percentage of uptime, such as 99.9 percent, or as "How many nines?" Many business customers are looking for Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that commit you to a specified QoS level and often mandate a monetary refund for your failing to meet that commitment. Do you know what your QoS level is? Even if your customers don't demand one, you should make a SLA with yourself. That is, commit yourself to providing a certain level of service. It should cover
Once you develop answers to these questions, then you can use them to improve your service. In turn, the improvements become central to your marketing. If you can prove your QoS commitment to yourself, it shouldn't be hard to convince customers to use your service.
Even if your customers dont demand one, you should make a SLA with yourself. That is, commit yourself to providing a certain level of service.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
[
To Outsource or Not
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
Customer service both technical and on the billing side is an area that is often overlooked. Many ISPs these days are turning to outsourced technical support mostly for the wrong reason: cost. In my opinion, customer service is an area where cost should never be a determining factor. A dollar saved on customer service can cost you hundreds in the end. Remember: The average disgruntled customer tells 10 people about it, while the satisfied one tells only four. If you are considering outsourcing, keep in mind that by doing so you will relinquish something approaching 50 percent of control over the quality of your customers' experience. Customers will now have two points of contact, in separate locations and with different organizations. You'll need to make sure that your outsourcing provider represents your company in a way that reflects favorably on you. Check up. Call your outsourcing provider posing as a user. Do it a number of times, at different times of day; see how they handle you. Think about it from a customer's standpoint. Do you want the person answering the telephone to represent your company?
of users that terminate service with you on a monthly basis. Most ISPs admit to a churn rate of two to three percent per month or between 25 and 33 percent per year. If your churn rate is typical, then, you've got to bring in more than two percent of new business every month just to stay in the same place. To actually grow your business, you need to do significantly more. In addition to the Quality of Service we discussed earlier, you can also lower your churn rate by cultivating an active relationship with subscribers. One key to lowering your churn is to offer services or content that your users can only get from your ISPs. Many ISPs have taken the first step in this, which is to localize their home page. You should never look to content as a moneymaker. The content is there as a service to users; any extra revenue it provides is a bonus. As great as localized content is, I never recommend putting it on your company's main index page. Local content has a way of taking over the page, and new users coming there to sign up often have to spend considerable time hunting around amid the local content before finding your subscription form. A better idea is a 'Members Only' section. This can house local content, plus many other things that users will find useful. Members Only sections can and should include items such as; a member's forum, specials or coupons, a system update page, and any other information you feel you can give to your users. I've seen ISPs post employee bios, employee-of-the-month features, pictures, and many other little items that give the ISP a personal feel.
Speed Matters
If you keep customer service in house (as I'd urge you to do), keep an eye on average call times and more importantly hold times. Users seem to deal pretty well with hold times in the five-minute range, but as hold times stretch to 10 minutes, they become increasingly upset. Average technical support calls are around seven minutes. I'd recommend making pretty darned sure you don't exceed this. One customer-service aid well worth implementing is a call tracking system. First of all, compiling a permanent history of all interactions you've had with each customer helps your staff personalize service. Second, keeping comprehensive records of problems that come up helps you proactively improve your operations, resulting in happier customers overall. And to say it one last time happy customers refer new customers to you and you profit.
Communicate Regularly
Another way to maintain a relationship with subscribers one that's met with a high level of success is to publish a newsletter, either via e-mail or via postal mail. E-mail is of course cheaper, but you can easily put a print newsletter in with your paper invoices and have a much better impact with your users. When all is said and done, the bottom line is to be creative. For example, one time I organized a customerappreciation party at a local Cyber Caf, which was one of our customers. The local radio station (another of our customers) sent some folks over. The customers absolutely loved it! I
Building Relationships with Your Customers
Every ISP has to deal with churn. Churn is the number 3
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
Taking Care of CLEC Customers
By Jim Marsh
btaining a customer is much like working with a jewel in the rough. Some precious stones are dull and unassuming when located in their natural environment. It is only after careful extraction and time-consuming polishing that they shine with that glimmer that we all enjoy.
Obtaining beauty from a precious stone requires a dedication and patience. A diamond does not spring from the ground completely faceted and in a perfect shape. Even a lowly opal must be handled properly to have that gleam that inspires a customer to purchase it. The same is true for a telephony customer. He may be sold on your services, but only through diligent efforts will that customer truly be a gem in your company's treasure chest. Picture your customers as treasures and think about how you would handle a treasure of immense value.
Every step of the customer sale, install, and support is similar to the development of that precious stone. The order taking, the order interpretation, the obtainment of services, the installation of services, the assignment of a number, the actual turn-up of those services, the entering of the services and billing information, the retrieval of call records, the rating and billing and the processing of payments are steps required to turn the rough customer into a polished, precious customer. I have often seen orders for customers viewed only as paper to be stacked around an office. No concern about the treatment of the order, other than a passing reference. I have seen the inability of a company to know where an order is. I have seen the lack of reverence for the timely action on an order. I have seen disrespect toward a Jupiterimages customer because they have the audacity to ask about the status of an order. I have posed a question to departments who handle
I have often seen orders for customers viewed only as paper to be stacked around an office. No concern about the treatment of the order, other than a passing reference.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
orders in the past. Would they throw a diamond on the ground or leave one lying about? In every case the answer is a resounding no! But, these same departments do so with one of the most precious gems a company has, the customer order. Whether it's an initial order or a change order, the inability to maintain control on an order is a failure of amazing magnitude. When processing a gem, the stone cutter will extract the gem from the rough stone, carefully hand the rough stone to a polisher who will perform the initial polish, pass the polished stone to a cutter who will carefully cut the stone into its shape and size, then pass it on to a jeweler who will set the stone into an appropriate setting. During these steps, great care is taken to assure that every stone is counted and recounted. After all who in their right mind wants to lose a diamond? An order is just as important as a diamond. If control is not maintained on the flow of the order, you might as well be throwing diamonds away. Order counts and dates are key to maintaining levels of control. When an order is delivered from the salesperson or obtained from the customer it must be considered precious to the lifeblood of the company. Another analogy is that of a tomato. If the tomato does not reach its destination in a timely matter, it will grow soft and turn rotten. Many of us have seen a rotten customer because of failures to meet service installation in a timely manner. So how do we protect our gems and keep our tomatoes from rotting? The process is actually very simple.
Many times I see managers waiting for the right metric to spring from the ground and solve their problems automatically. If you don't have industry metrics, create one. Never wait for someone else to solve your problems for you. That is why responsibility is a key. Handshaking is as simple as two friends agreeing to work together. There are two forms of handshaking, an intermediate hand-off, where an order is passed to another group knowing that it will return to be finished and the final, where the order is completed within your responsibility and passed to the process next in line. The intermediate handshake requires one to maintain a level of control more from timing than in an ownership role. If an order is passed to another group to perform a sub task, you must maintain control to assure the task is not only completed, but it is completed within your expected timeframe. If it is not your responsibility then make it so. Do not pass the buck and do not pass go. Accept the responsibility. The final handshake is where you have completed your tasks and are now ready to pass responsibility. In the final hand-off, you maintain control on what to pass on and when it was passed. If you are responsible, make sure you cover your responsibility. It's too easy for handshaking groups to say the other hand was dirty. Every group has the responsibility to keep their hands clean at all times and not place their fellows is a dirty situation. Managing the flow of orders is not a difficult task. But viewing customer orders as gems takes a little imagination and much determination to assure that everyone in the organization has the same viewpoint and considers the impact of throwing diamonds on the floor or letting tomatoes rot from inaction. The failure to minimize loss results in loss revenue, but more importantly lost reputation. The carrier that can't maintain their treasure will fail. I
Responsibility and Handshaking
Responsibility is easy, if you own the process or function, you are responsible. If you are a provisioner or order taker, you have a responsibility. If you are a manager, you are responsible for the actions of your department. If you shirk responsibility you do not deserve the title or the job. First of all, understand the effort and time required to work an order within your area of responsibility. Second, track and measure every action within your control. If you don't take on the responsibility to control that which you are responsible for, then what good are you to the company? If you are not taking measurements, start taking them. 5
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
Spit Happens
By Jason Zigmont
s I walked through the streets of my hometown one day, I saw a baby with a bib that boldly proclaimed "Spit Happens."
est and up front with your customers, you'll most likely discover that they are willing to accommodate a lot of the spit that happens. Many moons ago when I was first getting my feet wet in this ISP stuff, the ISP I was working at decided to move from our pile of USR Sportsters to a nice Microcomm ISPorte that had great blinky lights. (They really did. An ISPorte on top of a Xyplex Network 9000, which was black with more blinky lights, looked very impressive.) We decided it would be no problem to switch modems at 3 p.m. a slow time for us one by one. And so we did. (This Jupiterimages happened to be our largest POP more than 750 users calling into it which in 1996 was sizable in Connecticut.) Things looked good until about 6:00 p.m. when everyone started to call in and the ISPorte decided to loose its NVRAM settings one by one. The short and
Corny, I know, but the phrase it's playing off comes up all too frequently around many ISP shops. Most of us have Murphy on our payroll whether we want him or not. The ISP industry and its "cutting edge" technology tends to have good and bad days. We've all had those days when the server goes south at 3 a.m., or our favorite telco is attacked by a backhoe. It's the way you handle the problems that arise makes all the difference in the business consequences.
The Best Policy
The key is to be honest. When disaster strikes, remember that it's not the end of the world, and even the biggest providers have problems. If you are hon-
The key is to be honest. When disaster strikes, remember that its not the end of the world, and even the biggest providers have problems.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
sweet of the story is that during our peak time, for six hours at our biggest POP, we had zero dial-up connectivity. I have to say that while I use this ISP to illustrate many of my what-not-to-do stories, the organization showed grace under pressure on this occasion. They placed a message about the outage on our "hold" music, gave a realistic time-to-repair estimate, and took people's numbers, promising to notify them when the POP was back up. When it did come back up, we called every customer who left a contact number and sent out an explanatory e-mail.
And to our amazement, we didn't lose a single customer. The moral of the story is that when spit happens, you need to face the music (sorry for the mixed metaphors): Be up front and honest with your customers. Nine times out of 10, they will understand. But people hate being lied to and treated like kids. We all have bad days. We just need hope they are few and far between and fix things as fast as possible. I
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
Pamper Your Customers
By Nelson King
ou can only do so much. Resources like time, money, and staff are always limited. Some details fall through the cracks. I understand this reality for ISPs.
son on duty and makes the connection. ISP-A has a Web site that changes some content about every six months. ISP-B has a Web site where content is changed more often than a baby's diaper. While I wouldn't call its coverage deep, at least it's updated with current services and tends to offer useful information. Speaking of Web sites, ISP-A allows 5MB for a subscriber's Web site, while B allows 6MB. No big difference. However ISP-A will send you instructions (yes, on paper) on how to upload files to your Web site. ISP-B has an online tutorial. Neither is fancy compared to providers with online software to help customers create a Web site.
Jupiterimages
But guess what: I don't care especially when it comes to the details of customer service. I call ISP-A for technical support (I needed a massive message removed from the queue). What I get is a telephone answering system with a menu that I follow three levels deep before I find out that I've got the wrong number for technical support. I dial technical support and, of course, get the answering system again. This time I need only go two levels into the menu, but they want my customer ID. After I hunt down a recent bill to get the number, I struggle to enter the mix of alpha and numeric characters. Once the ID is entered, I'm informed that the tech support department is "not available" and would I please leave a message and phone number. At ISP-B, I get a real live person on the phone at the first try. She tells me the name of the tech support per-
ISP-A sends me a monthly bill. It's a crudely formatted 8.5 x 11 sheet that doesn't even have the company logo and phone number on it. That's all I ever see of this ISP. ISP-B, on the other hand, makes it possible to have the monthly charge placed on a credit card. They also send a monthly newsletter, usually running four or six pages, which keeps me about as informed as I'd
ISP-A sends me a monthly bill. It's a crudely formatted 8.5 x 11 sheet that doesn't even have the company logo and phone number on it.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
[
care to be.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
say, only one of them got my permanent business. Why haven't I touched on reliable, fast service? I want that, of course. But let's face it; these days, just about every ISP delivers good service within a very narrow range of prices. In this climate, customer-oriented details loom very large. For me, loyalty to an ISP is based mostly on the brief, ephemeral contacts I have in dealing with the organization. Small outfits often have a lot of good will from their initial subscribers, but it won't withstand much abuse. Part of that good will lies in the expectation of more personal attention and a "we try harder" attitude. It's probably worth whatever trouble it takes to remove the small rocks and smooth the little hard places. There are just too many other providers your customers can turn to. I
ISP-A seems to believe that no subscriber will ever show up in person. It's one thing not to be rich and therefore have offices in an older building, but it's another to have offices that look like a slum. It also helps to have somebody greet the occasional visitor who can form complete sentences. ISP-B has a few small rooms in an old Victorian house. The offices looked well lived in but organized, and the staff was downright loquacious. That's enough of the litany. Every subscriber can make his or her own list of comparisons and they do. Neither of the two ISPs I dealt with is large. Both have staffs of fewer than eight and subscriber lists that run less than 15,000. Neither is low-balling their rates or offering a wide range of other services. Needless to
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
Chatting Your Way to Success with Live Support
By Michelle Megna
"Hi, my name is Lisa, is there anything I can help you with today?" hile customers have come to expect this type of greeting when shopping at a brick-and-mortar store, Internet customers are also being offered a similar experience when doing business online, albeit World Wide Web style. Using live customer support technology (also called live chat or live help), businesses are able to offer immediate, real-time assistance to Web site visitors through text-based chat or voice applications. Live support is all about connecting Internet businesses with their customers by using a one-on-one, real-time communication tool. This allows businesses to engage in a virtual hand-holding process, whereby they can walk prospective customers through their purchase or provide technical support and answer general inquiries. Live support allows merchants to do this at a time that matters most -- when customers are on a Web site looking at products or
services, not at a later time when their e-mail inquiry makes its way to a merchant's inbox and the shopping cart has already been abandoned. Some of the largest businesses on the Web are using live support solutions, but even a small business with only a few employees (or smaller numbers of sales) can take advantage of real-time interaction with Web site visitors. In fact, many live support vendors have packages designed for and pricing affordable to the small business. There are three main functions that can be served by using live support applications, said Philippe Lang, vice president of LivePerson Inc. "Some businesses may be using live chat purely for online sales, Jupiterimages where the live support application provides leads or as way to initiate a pro-active engagement with the customer," Lang said. "Others may be looking for a way to assist with fielding cus-
Some of the largest businesses on the Web are using live support solutions, but even a small business with only a few employees (or smaller numbers of sales) can take advantage of real-time interaction with Web site visitors.
10
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
[
How Does It Work?
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
tomer service inquiries such as billing or shipping questions, and we also businesses using this application to provide immediate technical support. It can also be a mixture of all three."
Catering to Communities
By Kevin Beauchamp Localizing is a marketing approach that can do more than just add local flavor: It can instill tremendous customer loyalty. Localizing is when a company molds itself to fit into a specific community of customers. In many cases, this involves translating their Web site into another language. But to localize effectively, a company must communicate with the targeted community in ways that go beyond just presenting their company Web site in a particular language. Localizing can be expensive which is why many ISP have a difficult time making the effort but like everything else to do with marketing, it need not be. There may well be an ethnic or socially focused Chamber of Commerce in your area that would be more than willing to help you out in reaching the Chamber's focus community. You should definitely consider hiring an ethnic consultant or employee capable of reading and writing in the local language and assisting you in designing or collecting content that will appeal to the community you're addressing. This should be someone who can do more than simply speak and read the appropriate language, though: Make sure he or she can really communicate well in this language. A "localized" company brochure or Web site that looks as if it was written by a five-year-old just learning the language will not be an effective marketing tool. Furthermore, language is only the beginning. Your consultant or employee should also be steeped in the culture you're attempting to target. He or she should be knowledgeable about the community's ethnic or cultural interests and the programs, content, and marketing that should most appeal to community members. You don't want to promote your ISP with a barbecue rib picnic when your target audience is vegetarians. While this example is rather glaring, understanding and reflecting the subtle cultural nuances of specific groups will definitely help your cause.
A live support application can be used to manage many types of customer inquiries. Exact features and capabilities will differ depending on the vendor, but the end result is similar. On a Web site, visitors can choose to click a "Live Help" button if they need assistance, or you can use a proactive method of engagement by initiating a live chat window and asking if assistance is needed. From the user's point of view, the process is simple. They click an icon on the Web site to initiate a chat session with support personnel. While one can easily see the direct communication benefits of using a live support system, another benefit comes in the form of the user's analytical data, which is available to the live support operator. Live support operators are able to monitor the activities of a user and access data such as geographical information, page views, product selections, shopping history, previous chat sessions, or even what search terms were used in which search engine to bring that person to your Web site. Pages where users exit the Web site or check out process can be the perfect place to initiate proactive live support or to place live support icons. Not only do merchants open a live communication channel with their customers, live support applications also provide them with important data about that customer. Many live support applications, such as the LivePerson Pro and Click-to-Chat are fully hosted ASP solutions, which means small businesses do not need to invest in additional hardware or IT resources to provide live support. Additionally, these products can offer businesses standard security features. eStara's solutions, for example, boast secure multi-party conferencing, profanity filtering, SSL secure data transfer, and IP address blocking.
Extend Your Family
Include, Don't Exclude
Type vs. Talk
While live support sounds like a positive solution for both businesses and Web site visitors, it is not without
Keep in mind also that while niche marketing programs including localizing your company's services can be effective, they can also backfire. In going the localizing route, you must be careful not to alienate the rest of your potential market.
continued
11
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service
issues. One problem is that a text-based chat just isn't appropriate for all types of business. eStara's flagship product is its Click to Call. Instead of users clicking to text chat via the Web site, clients can choose to "click-to-call" by entering in their phone number. The call request is routed through eStara's data center, which instantly places phone calls to both the customer and the merchant's call center. To the customer it appears as if they are requesting a simple phone call, but analytics come into play as the customer's data and history (based on the Web site's privacy policy) is also transferred to the attending agent. eStara's Marketing Communications Manager, Dan Obregon, stresses the power of voice and the need for businesses to offer the right form of communication at the right time. "For more complex or high-value transactions, voice is often the most comfortable form of communication for client," he said. Using live chat can help improve customer relations, and sales, and is becoming more common, but most businesses have it located in the wrong place, according to a study, and many are not using it effectively. A survey commissioned by inQ, a ChatCommerce company, with the e-tailing group assessed how 31 online businesses that offered chat on their respective Web sites use the technology to sell. "We determined key dimensions of human interactions with online shoppers that are critical to inQ's customers' or live chat's success. We wanted to measure to what degree these dimensions have been adopted across the industry, and commissioned the e-tailing group to conduct a survey," said Christophe Cremault, senior vice president of marketing at inQ, which offers a Human Interaction Metrics tool. Here are the key findings from the e-tailing group: Chat is not located to sell. Eighty-eight percent have chat on customer service pages while only 42 percent offer it on product pages. Too-low usage of proactive chat. Only 15 percent leverage this technology. Offering alternative or better products occurs too infrequently. Average rating 2.7 out of 5.
Customers come from all walks of life; maintaining a site that panders to one specific group to the exclusion of all others can keep you from really growing. Mass-media advertising a site at [Link] to everyone in your market is great, but if the site is available exclusively in Spanish, you've wasted those dollars on a majority of English-speaking potential customers. Creating alliances with niche groups can be a very compelling marketing strategy and one that can reduce churn and spread the word about your company quickly. Doing it right means bringing in the right people who can really create the right cultural nuances that attract your target market; but at the same time, do not alienate other potential customers. I
Insufficient encouragement to buy. The 2.7 out of 5 score means a substantial number of potential sales are ignored. Unacceptable response time. Thirty-nine seconds average is below par, especially when half the sites surveyed connect in three seconds or less. Near-perfect customer service. With one exception, everybody did a great or excellent job at answering the initial question. Technology works (mostly): With a couple of exceptions that required (unsuccessful) downloads, the technology does not seem to be an issue. I
12
The ISP's Guide to Customer Service, An [Link] ISP eBook. 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.