Couriers deliver customer service
It isn’t easy to balance customer-service automation with personalized service. Many companies substitute technology for people as they automate customer service, says Claes Fornell, a University of Michigan business professor. But “it takes the buyer time to get used to it and the seller time to perfect it, if ever,” he says.
Some companies are getting it right, according to the University of Michigan’s latest American Customer Satisfaction Index, a survey of more than 70,000 customers on their experiences with almost 200 companies. United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp., for example, have earned consistently high customer-satisfaction scores on the Michigan index. “FedEx and UPS have managed to take advantage of what technology has to offer and combine that with the type of service that customers are demanding,” Fornell says. “You can call them up and still get someone on the phone.”
The employee-centric culture at FedEx is an integral part of its customer-satisfaction strategy. “If we take care of the needs of our people, then they’ll provide the service our customers expect,” says a spokeswoman for the Memphis, Tenn., shipping company.
FedEx uses its technology systems to monitor every aspect of a customer’s transaction. The goal: 100% accuracy, quality, and customer satisfaction on all transactions. That’s why FedEx has designed its technology systems so that every part of a transaction has some measurable quality to it: Was the package undamaged? Was the customer billed correctly? That data is aggregated into a database and evaluated daily. The system identifies failures from the customer’s point of view and assigns each one a number from 1 to 30, with 30 being the worst. The company then looks for ways to correct its mistakes.
“If a package ships to the wrong location, we don’t blame the customer. We blame ourselves for not having caught it, because we have systems that can perform address checking,” the spokeswoman says.
UPS also tries to look at itself through its customers’ eyes. Every application the company implements must meet a documented customer need, improve service in a measurable way, and save the company money over time. While UPS has implemented online self-service applications and is in the process of implementing an automated voice-response system, ensuring that a customer can reach a live person is important to the company. It’s integrating the voice, call-center, and self-service applications so customers have a consistent experience regardless of how they contact the company.
The Atlanta shipper is also taking advantage of the face-to-face interactions its drivers have with customers. Drivers are able to use the Internet to report customer needs to the sales team. If a salesperson makes a sale based on that lead, the driver is given points on a debit card that can be used as cash. This has increased sales and encourages drivers to become more aware of customer needs, a spokeswoman says.
UPS knows that the right balance between technology and personal interactions is critical. Without it, customers might decide to take their business elsewhere.
