Truly Lovely Customer Service, or Why Are the Brits So Cheerful?

There's an old joke that goes like this:

Q: What is the difference between American and British manners?

A: The British have them...the Americans don't.

Joking aside, the "British politeness factor" seems to be borne out in market research: in a recent poll carried out by international marketing company GMI, more than 25,000 people from 35 countries rated UK citizens to be "the most polite and best educated". 

Consider our recent experience here at Glance:

A customer of ours, Bill Boardman, was using Glance's screen sharing tool to collaborate with a colleague, sharing CAD  drawings.  Bill was using Glance to view his guest’s screen, and called to report a problem viewing some of his colleague’s images.  Debby, one of our fabulous engineers, got on the phone with Bill. Debby got Bill’s guest on the phone, changed a setting, and voila, all fixed.

In Debby's words, "There was nothing new there – most support issues we deal with are minor and readily fixed with a few minutes on the phone.
 
"The remarkable thing was that from the start, Bill was amazingly cheerful and seemed to genuinely enjoy the process of picking up the phone and talking to a human being.  We had a great conversation and while Bill came away with a solution to his problem, I came away with a glimpse into his design work, a recommendation for a new car (Subaru diesel), and a big smile on my face.

"As soon as I got off the phone our CEO, Rich Baker, who had overheard my half of the phone call, asked: 'Brit?'"

How could he tell?  We’ve noticed around here that our transatlantic customers just seem to always be having a blast and it’s a lot of fun to take their calls. In fact, Bill's first words when we answered the phone were, "Is this the wonderful Glance Networks of Boston, Massachusetts?!"

Wow. Can we learn something here?

My guess is that Bill started off his tech support call assuming he had a decent chance of getting his question answered; and his cheerful tone and words reflected that presumption. Consequently, we responded with stepped-up enthusiasm (and here at Glance, we're pretty enthusiastic to start with!), determined to fulfill Bill's request, no matter what. See how that works?

What we learned from that interaction with Bill was this:

1) For consumers requiring support: Throw out the baggage you've acquired from previous unsatisfactory customer service experiences and be optimistic about your next call. Let your words and tone to the service rep who answers your call, reflect that. See if the service rep responds similarly.

2) For businesses giving support: Answer calls with human beings (and cheerful ones at that) instead of letting it go into the queue - if we're asking consumers to go out on a limb and be cheerful, than you've got to do your part by making their customer service experience positive.

Give it a try. What have you got to lose?

So, what does your business do to ensure cheerfulness on both ends of the call?

-- Carla Gates, Director, Marketing, Glance Networks

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The best pay: Kind words from customers

As an entrepreneur, you wake up one day all excited about some oddball idea -- one of those "Wouldn't it be great if..." inspirations.
 

You look to find a few folks who share your enthusiasm. Together, you work and work and work to get an initial version up and running.

And then... if you're one of the lucky ones... the really big payoff finally happens.  Customers you've never met take time out of their day to say something completely unsolicited and remarkably kind about what you created.

We've been fortunate to enjoy that experience many times over here at Glance.  

I remember the epiphany Carla had a few days after coming on board to help us with marketing.  I had just forwarded another happy customer email to the team. She turned to me and said, "I just can't believe our customers. They simply love Glance!  No one ever said they 'loved' the bank I used to work at."

This morning's email box held another delightful gift to us, one that I'd like to share with you. This kind of note really makes our day.

Hi Folks,

When you run a business that really does a good job, people usually don't give you the praise you deserve; they just take you for granted.  So, as a small business owner, I thought I'd pass along a quick story.

Our [audio] conference line vendor's service has gotten so bad that we are now forced to find another vendor.  Our office manager went looking about for a replacement and ran across one that does both online conferences and telephone conferences so she sent out a company-wide email inviting people to attend a meeting where the prospective vendor would demonstrate their product.  She also set off a bit of a firestorm - people were literally *mad* at the idea that someone might even *consider* giving up Glance.

From the support dept:

 

"From a support point of view I do not want to lose Glance. If we move away from Glance for conferencing I would want to keep a Glance account for support. It is a great tool which gives me the ability to easily view and control remote computers."

From customer support:

"I really like glance... why are we considering changing??? We just need a new phone line asap. "

From sales:

"We have no intentions of leaving Glance."

Finally - from me, trying to calm fears and keep everyone from jumping all over the office manager:

"We're all big fans of Glance so we aren't really considering a change there at this time."

I almost had to laugh at just how strongly people felt about this.  I didn't of course, I was too busy calming everyone down.  Keep in mind that no one was writing a "testimonial" on behalf of Glance - these were all people just defending their work and speaking from the heart.

So...to everyone at Glance: Keep up the good work!

This is a good day

-- Rich Baker, CEO & Founder

10 Ways to Exceed Expectations in Customer Service

Customers crave old-fashioned, friendly, and informed service over speed. And there is plenty of evidence that good customer service is positively correlated with a company's financial performance.

In a recent CRM Today survey of 2,000 consumers in the U.S and the U.K., nearly half (49%) said poor service led them to change service providers in at least one industry over the past year.

Here is my own recent Case Study of bad customer service....

I recently moved and needed to transfer my Internet service. Should be simple, right?  Then why did I dread making the phone call?  Although the Account Executive was very friendly, he was unable to make the simple service switch without the aide of a supervisor and 45 minute hold time for me. At the end of the call, he promised me all I needed to do was plug in my modem and it would all magically work. Right. (Sound familiar?)

Skeptical, I went home and plugged in the modem only to find that the magic had not happened. I sighed and uttered a naughty word as I reached to contact my ISP via phone....again. After being disconnected from the call 3 times, and with a total wait time of 23 minutes, I finally reached a "technical expert". He informed me he needed to flip a switch to "talk" to my modem and then asked me to reboot my Mac. I told him I did not want to reboot my computer as I knew it was unnecessary (being in a technical field myself). He tried to convince me otherwise. It felt like he was following a scripted checklist, instead of listening to the me. He argued further with me and only stopped when I told him my Internet access was back up.

Unfortunately, I was reminded how difficult it is to find a company with easy customer service these days!  Here at Glance, we stick to 10 principles of customer service, and have received rave reviews about how we consistently exceed expectations, which translates into loyal customers and word-of-mouth sales:

1. Be a good listener. Take the time to identify customer needs by asking questions and concentrating on what the customer is really saying. Don't make assumptions.
2. Identify and anticipate their needs. Customers don't buy products or services. They buy good feelings and solutions to problems.
   
3. Make customers feel important and appreciated. Treat them as individuals. Always use their name and find ways to compliment them, but be sincere.
   
4. Help customers understand your technology in as simple a way as possible. Your company may have the world's best technology, but if customers don't understand it, they may get confused and impatient.
   
5. Appreciate the power of "Yes". When customers have a (reasonable) request tell them that you can do it. And, always do what you say you are going to do.
   
6. Know how and when to apologize. When something goes wrong, apologize. It's easy and customers like it. The customer may not always be right, but the customer should always feel like "they won".
7. Give more than expected, and give the unexpected. Think of ways to elevate yourself above the competition. 
   
8. Get regular feedback from your customers. Encourage and welcome suggestions about how you could improve.
   
9. Never forget that the customer pays our salary and makes your job possible.
   
10. Treat staff well. Employees are your internal customers and need a regular dose of appreciation. Thank them and find ways to let them know how important they are.

-- Jo Klos and Carla Gates

Follow Glance on Twitter and Facebook for daily tips on using Glance's sales enablement tool to maximize every conversation throughout your sales cycle.

Still a Differentiator: Delighting the Customer

It started with a retweet (RT) on Twitter over the weekend -- @TrishLambert (a Glance customer) thanked Glance in the ubiquitous 140 Twitter characters:

"HUGE THX 2 @glancenetworks 4 handling critical tech issue 4 me at 8 pm! BTW, awesome screen sharing svc! http://is.gd/5cJ6W" 

And...she included a link to our homepage. This is the best kind of viral compliment a company can hope for!

I asked around the office and found that Glance Account Exec, Mike Walsh, had indeed, helped Trish with a technical issue for a webinar she had scheduled the next day. And he helped her from his home, at 8pm at night. Trish found this unexpected and highly gratifying, and so she tweeted about it.

I recently read a Bain & Co. study that said that while 80% of senior executives believe they deliver superior customer service, only 8% of their customers agree. Ouch! At Glance, we are committed to "customer delight", which by definition, goes beyond "customer satisfaction". To us, customer delight means:

• living and breathing a company culture of integrity, service, quality;
• empowering employees to solve customer problems on their own; and
  
• giving truly unexpected customer service and experiences to everyone we come in contact with.

Customer delight results in enormous goodwill (which quickly turns viral in this age of social media), and customer loyalty, and sets you way apart from your competition (especially important in a crowded field like ours.)

Try it today and your business will reap the benefits. (Oh, and if you need to contact us here at Glance, I hope we continue to find ways to exceed your expectations!)

Follow us on Twitter for more tips on delighting customers.

-- Carla Gates, Director, Marketing

Is Remote Service The Next Big Thing? It's More Than A Remote Possibility.

In the old days (last year and beyond), tech support services were judged by how often and inexpensively they could get a person to the customer's site to deploy, train and troubleshoot. Oh, how times have changed.

Today, the sign of a successful tech support operation is never having to be there in person.

Remote support helps the supplier and customer in countless ways, and is now the new standard. To jump in the game successfully, you need a fail-safe, business-class desktop sharing tool like Glance.

The effects of remote support via Glance on your bottom line can be enormous. Consider how few of the hours of an onsite service tech are actually billable. Time is wasted traveling – and the more in-demand the employee, the more time is wasted!

And even if you get the best person to a customer site with no travel expense (say he works next door), he's tied up all day with one client. With remote support that same employee can help a dozen customers in one afternoon without leaving his desk. More productivity, less waste, everyone wins.

Go remote and get more out of your support employees, settle more incidents quicker, enjoy a drop in repeat calls (since issues get solved the first time), save a mint on travel, and improve customer satisfaction.

Please pass the remote control. The world is going remote. In this economy you have no choice but to join them. However, you do have a choice of how. The quickest, simplest, most reliable way is to get Glance.

How One-Click Desktop Sharing Provides All-Day Help To DayliteHelp.com

Cynthia provides sales training and tech support for customer relations software, Daylite.

We were glad to hear in her new video that DayLiteHelp.com's customer relations are improved by using Glance.

Cynthia's in Portland, OR, but 95% of her clients are spread out all over the world. In her new video submitted to Glance's Lights, Camera, Savings page, Cynthia maintains that "the only way I can help them is to use Glance, and I use it all day long, every day."

Wow. All day long, every day! Sounds like the difference between a nimble, one-click screen sharing tool like Glance and a complicated web conferencing application like WebEx.

Glance's lightweight, business-class interface allows Cynthia to jump on and off with customers all day long, to "share clients screens, share their mouse, and provide them with real-time training."

"There's just no way I could do this without using the Glance software. So a big thank you to Glance."

Cynthia, there's just no way we could offer Glance's one-click desktop sharing without people like you! So the thanks is all ours. We're happily awarding you with three months of Glance FREE for your wonderful video testimonial.

Same goes for any other Glancers looking to save $150 – simply post a quick video about Glance, and fame, fortune and glory is yours!

We Always Knew Good Service Helps ROI. A New Study Reveals Just How Much.

Outstanding service has always been a labor of love for us. We don't do it because of ROI, but because after years of running Glance we still get a wonderful feeling when somebody uses our desktop sharing product. Good service flows naturally from genuine gratitude.

All the same, we're glad to see a recent Harris Interactive / Right Now study on Customer Service Impact revealing an upward trend in the importance of customer service. In 2008, 87% of all consumers stopped dealing with a company based on a bad service experience. 84% will spread the news of the bad experience via word of mouth.

Ouch. Glad we don't have to worry about that.

On the sunny side, over half of consumers are willing to pay more for better service – even in a down economy. Most respondents said that good customer treatment is the easiest way to get them to spend more on additional products and services.

It's nice to have our bases covered going into this trend. If our service helped our bottom line over the years, we're glad. But either way, we answer live, and on the first ring when you call. Always have, always will.

Not because of ROI, but because we're eager to hear what you have to say.

Of course, we'll take the ROI, too. :)

-Carla Gates

Hitting the Customer Feedback Jackpot

Recently we hit the jackpot with J., a random customer of ours who uses Glance for web demos. We sent a standard note inquiring about his satisfaction...and, surprisingly, he came back with a deluge of professional-grade suggestions – the kind of high-level stuff you'd expect from a senior marketing manager of a multi-national tech vendor...or something like that.

Turns out the guy was a Senior Global Marketing Manager of a huge, legendary tech giant, but that's besides the point – we're used to getting great advice from all kinds of people.

The point is that user feedback is as good as gold. And with thousands of users an email away, we like our odds. That's why everyone at Glance, including our CEO (who had the pleasure of initiating the email thread with J.) invests uncommon amounts of time and energy into listening. As far as we're concerned, anything less would be the real gamble. Thanks, J.!

-Carla Gates

No Jo

Jo is out of the office this week at a trade show.  For most of you,  Jo needs no introduction - if you've ever phoned us you have most likely spoken to her.  For anyone who has not had the privilege, she's our resident expert on all sales and support issues - from figuring out what subscription package best meets your needs, to fixing your network connection.  When Jo is out or on a call, there is a small cadre of other extremely  capable people who will help you, but (no offense anyone) none of us quite have Jo's panache.

Occasionally I'm fortunate enough to get to take a call myself.  I say "fortunate" because in many companies engineers are not allowed to talk to customers unless they are specially trained in support.   (After all, who knows what they might say.)  When I answer the phone sometimes people assume I'm Jo.  I've even had people just launch right in assuming I recognize their voice and know their story, as Jo does.  I try not to be disheartened by the telltale note of disappointment when I have to correct them and identify myself as not Jo.

The truth is, it's great talking to customers.  There's nothing like hearing first hand what people are looking for.  Many of you run small business and probably talk to your customers all the time.  As your business grows, or if it already has, try giving your 'back room' employees a chance to grab the phone every so often.  With or without panache, it's a great way to keep everyone customer focused.

Debby Mendez

Mothers-in-law.. a Glance success story..

At MacWorld last month, quite a few people immediately latched onto the idea of using Glance (and our recently introduced remote control feature) to support their relatives with technical problems.   This comes up suprisingly often, even recently in an article Keith Shaw wrote for Network World. 

It seems to have become a real hazard of having any technical expertise these days.  Everybody needs and uses their computer, but the things are still so complicated with so many little things to go wrong.  Suddenly all your relatives want to talk to you...

It reminded me of an amusing story from an inimitable former colleague at Glance:

From: "Xxxx Xxxx" <____@gmail.com>
Date: September 23, 2007 12:10:49 PM EDT
To: glance@glance.net
Subject: Mothers-in-law.. a Glance success story..

So, it is Sunday morning, and I awoke to a bruised cranium (I'm afraid
last night involved Grey Geese instead of the traditional Grey Goose)
and a call from my mother-in-law. She was in a panicked state that
her email was no longer working, then demanding that I immediately
drive the hour to her house to resolve this issue. I believe you all
remember my monster-in-law stories, so there is no need to elaborate..

After delivering this call to me, my lovely bride grabbed my Mac, a
cup of coffee and the Excedrin. While booting my Mac I had the
"customer" quickly download 2.3. She got a session running, at which
point I asked for the key. Once in, I had her click on that new
fangled remote control button. I then promptly asked her to end the
phone call and leave her office.

The email problem was simple to fix.. she had her smtp and pop3
settings at pop.smtp.com.. I have no clue how she did that, I am just
so pleased that my entire Sunday was not ruined to resolve the issue.

I called the "customer" back to explain the issue was resolved. She
was amazed that I did so in a few minutes while working remotely. She
then added "I guess you will never have to drive to D_____ again?"..
hmmm.. I did not respond..

Thank you Glance...

Xxxx

Now we haven't really designed Glance as a remote support tool (yet...), but some people are using it that way.  And if it can save you an hour of driving or a lost half day of productivity or serious loafing time, that can be worth a lot!

-- Rich Baker, Founder & CEO, Glance Networks