The oddest idea

“That is the oddest idea I have ever heard of.” Donald, the Customer Service manager, burst out in his typical ill-tempered voice.

“Do you mean we should pay the people who call our support desk? If anyone should pay, it’s them, not us!”

Michelle, standing in front of Donald’s desk, replied calmly and continued.

“Ok, it may sound a little bit odd, but to me, it’s innovative. As long as we haven’t tried yet, I do believe it will somehow increase our revenue. And by the way; they are not just people, they are our customers.”

Michelle was a long-time Customer Service representative in the company C. Throughout her years as a representative, she had listened to all kinds of complaints and, believe it or not, she had also got some credit. She, and several co-workers, had been there for the customers while managers had come and gone. All the time they had felt a superior attitude from other parts of the company. Customer Service seldom got any credit and had no commission whatsoever connected to their performance. Other departments had reward systems of noticeable amounts, not to mention the wine and dine budget of the sales department.

But during the last year, new winds had start to blow. Irritated customers, competitors taking up speed, and then Nancy, the new CEO; young and ambitious with ideas about customers and employees first. Michelle had a sense that this could go well, really well.

Nancy had started out with a clear forbiddance of all kinds of cost centers. From now on, only profit centers were allowed, and economic engagement had been pushed out to all individual co-workers. Michelle, who was a person full of ideas, liked it. She had always thought Customer Service had many untapped opportunities and longed to be allowed to prove it. And then Donald, if only they could get rid of him….

Michelle especially liked the concept of testing hypotheses in the way she had just recently learned at a course. The course had been set up internally and was meant to give all employees a piece of the latest news on innovation. As Nancy knew, you also must practice what’s taught in a course to really understand it. That is why she had assigned a small budget for business experiments that any co-worker was allowed to use.

“I want to start right away, and I know I have support from the top management to do so.” Michelle was eager, and Donald just looked at her as she ignored him. “I have already talked to one of the external business consultants, who are hired by Nancy, and he said he will help me.”

Donald knew he could not refuse her and tried to hide the sigh. “Alright, do as you wish, but make sure it is not seen in my budget expenses.”

Michelle left happy and content from the short meeting, wondering where she would start. “Perhaps writing that letter to, maybe thirty, customers and offer them a deal with 2 dollars per minute in pay on support calls. Yes, that would be my starting point and well within budget.” She thought.

Input from A Coach

“Great, Michelle, I really like your energy! What are your assumptions here?” The business consultant asked after having read the letter with the recompense offer.

“I guess customers will be surprised and curious. Some will think it’s a joke and some will actually sign up to find out. In the long run, I think we will be able to show that we are truly serious about our customer relations and want to deliver a fault-free product. Customers will love us and give us respect.”

“OK, that is a good start, but what will be the real benefit from a business perspective? What will happen when customers show this respect, will it change any behaviors? That is what I would like you to tell me.”

Michelle embodied a big human question mark and became silent. After a long pause she started talking again. “You know, I think it will make customers stay with us and also, if we market this recompense feature properly, it could increase our sales.”

“Now we are talking. You seem to be the born business developer.” grinded the business consultant as he shook Michelle’s hand as a symbol of a business deal. “What you just told me is usually the hardest part. For the next step, to make your assumption tangible and measurable, I would like you to remember what I taught you at the course.”

“I do remember!” Michelle said somewhat proud. “It is all about defining some kind of measurement as a hypothesis to validate the assumption. And I think you are right, it is not that hard. I started thinking about it directly when you ‘forced’ me to develop my assumptions. Firstly, I would use our standard customer satisfaction index, of course based on NPS, to see what the customers who signed up for the recompense are saying. Let’s give it a month and their score need to be above 8, as compared the stable 5 we reach today.”

“As for the increased sales, I know Ted at our marketing department rather well. I will ask him if he could do a tiny campaign with the message: our customer’s time is so important we will now recompense when they have to spend their time on support issues. I am sure the marketing guys have ways to direct campaigns and measure customer responses. As for customers actually signing new contracts, based on the recompense offer, we have to assign them to the program as well. All I need to do is pull the minutes out of our CRM-system and make manual payments.

“But, what if I’m wrong?” Michelle looked like a question mark again.

“Yes, it is a good chance that you are wrong.” The “comforting” words from the business consultant made Michelle even more confused.

“But the point is not to be right. The point is to start making the business assumptions you desire, test those assumptions, and then learn from them. If you never step out of your comfort zone and try new approaches you will not learn. It is as simple as that.”

The discussion continued the rest of the afternoon, and Michelle felt totally exhausted when she arrived home in the evening. Still satisfied over the great deal of land she had covered in just a few hours. She, naturally, felt a little bit nervous for what she was up against. She felt better when remembering one of the key messages from the course: Acting in small controlled steps is the way to avoid the risk of ending up with big flaws. Under these conditions it is OK to fail, which is indeed the only path to capture real learnings.

In Action

Already the next day, after a short persuasive meeting with her colleagues, Michelle had sent out the letters, regarding the recompense offer to thirty random customers. The setup was very simple. Customers responding to the offer were recorded in a Google document. Duration of support calls was registered automatically in the CRM-system and to make things easy, chat and email had not been included in the offer. The only extra administration needed could be handled by Michelle as part of her normal work hours. Michelle was so excited, she was thinking about her experiments all the time and even put in some extra hours now and then without reporting it.

“I didn’t know you could do this stuff.” Stephanie, one of Michelle’s closest colleagues said during their routine morning coffee on the second day. “Just all these strange words are a mystery to me, and then the calculations and business knowledge you seem to have picked up from your pocket… I don’t get it. When did you go to the university?”

“Oh, come on Steph! I do not need a university degree to drive this.” Michelle laughed and nodded at Donald’s door. “Look at him, with all his impressive testimonials. What does he do? Sit by the desk and follow up the budget or spend time in management meetings. I wonder when he was last out of the office to meet real customers? Also, what I hear is that schools are not really up to date with the latest in business development. So, I am pretty confident I can do it. We can do it!”

The First Result

In the first week, just two customers signed up for the recompense offer, and by the next week, another three. But then, no one showed any interest. On Friday afternoon of week three, Michelle was devastated. Why was the interest so low? “Maybe they do think it’s a joke or do not want to become guinea pigs in some experiment.” She thought to herself and walked over to Stephanie feeling the need to share with someone.

“What do you think about my experiment? Is it really worth to continue? All I’ll get will be mockery from Donald.” Michelle said.

Stephanie, trying to look compassionate, replied. “I do understand your feelings. I think we all expected a greater interest. And, if I got it right, we only got two payed support calls so far?”

“Yea, six minutes in two weeks. At least my budget is doing fine.”

“I handled one of the issues we should pay for and the guy calling in was very polite and correct. The strange thing is, I cannot recall this guy has been polite any time before. He is the type that seems to have a need to show when he is right.”

“Funny, I heard the same from Karen, who handled the other issue we pay for. But I am sure it’s just a coincidence.”

Then Michelle’s phone rang. It was Ted from marketing.

“Hey Michelle, I can tell you the interest for your idea has been over my expectations. I do not remember when we had so many positive responses and new leads, based on such a small effort, any time before. Everyone I talked to here at marketing has gone from being very skeptical, to true believers. When I sum up what we hear from the market, the general message is: Finally, a company that seems to acknowledge customers for real.”

Michelle was struck dumb and let Ted continue.

“Of course, this is just a very early and tiny indicator, but my gut feeling is that you are really on to something. In fact, we got two new customers that signed contracts including the payed support this week. Is it Ok if I send you their references first thing Monday morning? I’m almost gone for the weekend.”

“Yes, that’s absolutely ok, Ted. You just save my weekend. Thank you!”

Michelle ended the call with a much better feeling. Maybe the recompense feature wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Next Step

After a little more than a month went by, Michelle concluded the small survey of the customer satisfaction index. Even if the survey only included the seven customers, who signed up, Michelle was disappointed when looking at an NPS score of just six. She met the business consultant who explained.

“Michelle, don’t be disappointed. Remember I told you, if you don’t try you will not learn.”

“Ok, I will try to be more optimistic. What is the next step?”

“To me, the result looks interesting. Two new customers who both gave a nine, which means strong promoters.”

“Ah, all new customers are positive for a while…”

“I admit, this is not much to lean on. But given the tiny effort you put in and the positive response from marketing, I would say it is worth another go. I suggest we skip the current customers and let marketing do a slightly bigger campaign. Can you continue to record call duration in the same simple way you do?”

“Ok, sounds fair. Would you like to speak to marketing?”

“Yes, of course. I’m curious to hear more of what marketing thinks. I will also mention your initiative at the top management meeting I plan to attend tomorrow.

In the following month, marketing expanded the targeted campaign with another recompense offer. Again, the same positive signals were perceived from the market. The idea that someone would pay customers when they needed support was something completely new and unique. Several more customers signed contracts and top management was starting to become really interested.

The Established Feature

After one year, the recompense offer was an established feature connected to the brand. The company C had managed to create a solid reputation of genuinely caring for their customers. Sales had increased, and in the regular CSI survey, it was apparent the company image had a significant impact. Top management was happy, Customer Service was happy, everybody was happy, except Donald who had lost the position as Customer Service manager.

The most interesting effect, resulting from the recompense feature, was the number of support calls dropping significantly, as more and more customers signed the deal. Also, the quality in both questions and answers increased, making work-life in Customer Service more fun and interesting. It seemed that the customers prepared a lot more information prior to reaching out for help. Looking for answers in the FAQ and in the knowledge base reduced the necessity to do some calls that were made purely based on routine, prior.

With very few exceptions, customers did not impose on the possibility to get paid for calling into Customer Service. To be on the safe side, some rules had been added to the recompense agreement. For example, the maximum number of calls and maximum length of calls for a given period had been put in writing. But the limitations were generous and had no practical implication for most of the customers.

The only thing, annoying for Michelle, was that still a number of customers were leaving. They left at the same rate as before and there were no signs the recompense offer had any influence.

“Well, everything cannot run as expected,” Michelle thought. Within a couple of months, she was named as the new Customer Service manager. Armed with ideas of how she and her staff could continue to develop ways of working and grow their knowledge of world class customer services, Michelle took her new role in stride.

The intention with this story is explain how innovation could work anywhere. Practices, tools and mindset usually associated with a Startup can be and should be used by everyone.

Customer Service is a typical part of the operational process described in the article Startup then what?