Most businesses would be hard-pressed not to list customer service as a top priority. But the definition of good customer service varies as widely as do types of businesses.
So your coffee wasn’t served with a smile this morning; you still may return tomorrow for another cup. But if you’re buying a big-ticket, emotionally charged item such as a home addition, satisfaction takes on a whole new level of importance.
As the executive vice president of Macedonia-based Patio Enclosures, Jerry Fox admits a growth spurt last year left his company with some room to improve its customer-responsiveness record. In January, he helped launch a new program called JUMP (Job Update and Milestones of Progress), designed to improve communication between the $70 million company and its customers.
Fox speaks frankly of the indications that such a program was needed, and how it was implemented.
What indications did you have that made you realize that you needed to put a program like this in place?
When we have complaints from customers and you can see the frustration. Normally, lead time (in building a sunroom) is eight to 10 weeks. We had such a banner year last year that in some markets, that lead time stretched to 16 weeks, 18 weeks.
How did you know that customers were getting frustrated?
If they didn’t feel like they were being adequately serviced by the local branch, they would call into headquarters. They’d tell you up front, “No one tells me what’s going on. I’ve seen the salesman, I haven’t heard from him in five or six weeks. I call the office to find out what’s going on, but I think you should be telling us what’s going on.”
In most of the cases, we’re within the (eight to 10 week) time frame. That’s not good enough, though. We felt that if we became proactive in supplying this information, it would hold down the natural frustrations of waiting a certain period of time.
Everybody wants it now. And of course, you can’t do that when you’re in a custom manufacturing environment. So in order to hold down that frustration level, we felt that if, at certain times during the whole process, we initiated the contact, even if it’s just leaving a message on an answering machine … this will hold down that frustration level, and keep them involved in the whole process.
How often during the construction process are you in contact with a customer?
The first step is actually done the day of the sale. They’re given a construction guide. It’s a description of the whole process. And then each time that we make contact with customers, we remind them to refer to that guide, but add, “Mr. and Mrs. Jones, your room is on order, and we expect delivery the second week of February.”
And then in the second week of February, when the room is delivered to the location, we make contact saying, “Your room has been delivered and we will be contacting you shortly with the exact installation date.” So there are no surprises. They always know what’s going on.
After we sign the contract, there are actually nine contacts that we make with the customer, keeping them informed.
Once you saw a need for the program, how was it developed?
We went out and surveyed all of our (41) locations, asking them, “What do you do to keep your customers informed?” This was done in mid-1999. The survey was sent to all of our operations supervisors. And they submitted what they did.
Some did nothing, some did a lot, some did a little. And what we did is we took the creme de la creme, and we took all of the types of contact that were going on, and we put them in a set program. And each one of these contacts is triggered by an activity. When the permit is issued by the building department, saying that it’s OK to build this room in this community, we notify the customer, “Your permit has been approved.’”
There are nine activities that take place that trigger nine contacts with the customer. And we really believe that this will bring down that frustration level in the upcoming year.
How do you monitor that contact from headquarters?
This is a mandatory program, and (each location) will be audited. Each of our locations, once a year, receives an operational audit, and we will audit, because all of those nine contacts have to be logged in to what we call the job jacket. And so they are signed off on either by the operations supervisor, or the sales secretary who mailed out the postcard, or the installer who left the note on the door. So everybody involved in this program has to check off that the customer was notified. It’s a mandatory process, because the need for this was so obvious.
We do this at our window of opportunity. In other words, if you don’t inform the customer, and they’re calling you irate and frustrated, it’s normally at a time when you’re doing something else, and the phone rings and you have a mad customer.
By us becoming proactive, we can better schedule our time for making these contacts, because if you don’t call them, they’re going to call you. And they’re not always going to call you at the best time.
Have you noticed a trend among companies recently to improve customer service?
There’s no doubt about it. So often you hear about customer service, and that the customer is king, and a lot of times it’s just lip service. You say that, and you go about SOP, and you’re not really servicing the customer.
This program was developed because we heard a loud and clear message from our customer base as to why they were frustrated. It’s simply a lack of communication.
Would you have responded the same way 10 years ago?
Times have changed. Circumstances have changed. We’re in the remodeling business, and in the construction business there’s a serious shortage of skilled labor. Kids want to come out of school and become computer programmers. They don’t want to wear a tool belt and climb up and down a ladder anymore.
This has been evolving over time, and our sales are increasing. We don’t sell a product you need, we sell a product you want. The demand for sunrooms is very high right now … And today’s consumer in this computer world wants everything now.
With the high backlog of business, and the strain of having an insufficient labor force to put the product in, we have to be very responsive to our customers. Conditions have changed. It wasn’t like this 10 years ago.