Keeping the Customer in Customer Service

Presented by: Ann Marie Hall, The University of Memphis Jim Rizzo, Providence College * And perhaps yourself as well

Introduction: Ann Marie

• Local Tech Support for Residence Life at The University of Memphis. • Support 2500 Residents in 9 Halls all over campus. As well as all support staff for ResLife, Child Care and Food Service.

• • • • • No extra cost for service as it is offered ONLY to Residents.

2 full time staff and 3 part time student workers. One ResTech office located in our largest housing facility.

We have a mix of hardwired and wireless halls. IT provides the infrastructure on the Network, so we don’t have to support the actual wiring.

Background: Jim

• Small private college • • About 4,000 undergrads 80% live on campus • Single centralized helpdesk • 2 full time employees • • About 70 student employees • Field Techs • • • ResNet Techs Helpdesk Assistants Lab Monitors Supports faculty, staff, and students

What we do and don’t do at U of M for Residents

• We do: • Get and keep our Residents connected to the Internet • • • • Clean up any trojans/virus/aware, etc. Install any AV, drivers, updates, or programs necessary to keep them clean and on the Internet.

Attempt to diagnose any problems outside of our area.

Provide drop off service to our one ResTech office.

• We don’t: • Open the computer to install any hardware.

• • Go into the customers room for on site service. Run a full service repair shop. • For Staff…we do just about everything such as work on hardware, software, server admin, and all other tech related problems.

What we do and don’t do at Providence College

• Students • • We do • • Network connectivity Virus and spyware removal • • • Basic software support On-site service Walk-in service We don’t • • • Hardware support OS support Drop-off service • Faculty and Staff • • We do • • All software support All hardware support • On-site service We don’t • Home computer support

What is Customer Service?

• The ability to provide a service or product in the way that it has been promised.

• Treating others as you would like to be treated yourself.

• An organization's ability to supply their customers' wants and needs.

• The process of taking care of our customers in a positive manner.

• The commitment to providing value added services to external and internal customers, including attitude knowledge, technical support and quality of service in a timely manner.

The definitions above taken from CustomerServiceManager.com

Virtues of Customer Service

• Patience • • • Slow down, take your time • Empathy Put yourself in their position if you needed help.

• Calmness • Don’t make the user more anxious than they already are • Humility Arrogance has no place in customer service • • Admitting you’re wrong Saying “I don’t know” • Listening • Allow the user to vent

The customer is always right…

• Not entirely true • Explain why they are not right • Explain what they did wrong • Help the customer realize that they aren’t 100% right without telling them that they’re wrong.

Service and Support through Education

• “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” • It’s better to talk a user through the solution rather than do it yourself.

• Education prevents repeat calls about the same problem.

Training

• Review and stress virtues with employees • Put yourself in the end user’s shoes • Stress use of education where appropriate • Stress the use of call escalation to resolve problems more efficiently

Greetings – The First Impression

• Smile. Why not?

• Be nice, it wont hurt and it might make them feel better. • Be audible, don’t mumble.

• Have an air of assurance without arrogance.

Scenes: Greetings Earthling

• “Hello, how can I help you?” • “Welcome to ResNet. What seems to be the problem?” • “Hi, my name is Jim, what can I do for you?” • “So…you got a problem or what?” • “Yeah….what do you want?” • “What?” • “Here, sign this release that says I can do whatever I want to your computer and even if I totally fry it, you can’t do anything about it.” • Mumble/groan.

Requesting Information

• • • Keep accusatory tones out of your voice. You are diagnosing a problem, not conducting an interrogation. Be polite. Please and thank you. Don’t assume they speak the same language you do. Be it technical or English.

Scenes: Information please…

• “When did you first notice the problem?” • “Do you recall downloading anything recently?” • “Have you let anyone else use your computer?” • “I am sorry could you repeat that a little slower? I didn’t quite get what you said”.

• “What have you done to your computer now?” • “Why would you do something that stupid?” • “You must have been on some porn sites and downloading some real trash to get this messed up. So what do you expect me to do about it?” • “Huh? I can’t understand you. Your accent is awful. Cant you speak English?” • Mumble/Sigh

Delivering Instructions

• Be positive and upbeat. • Be clear and on point. • Do not demean the client. There is no need to talk down to anyone. • Don’t shout.

Scenes: Instructions made simple

• “Here, let me show you how this works, then next time it will be easy for you to find the connection.” • “You almost had it. Try again, but not that one, the one just to the left of there. Great.” • “Ok, that’s much better. Let’s try it one more time. ” • “Just don’t touch anything. You don’t have any idea what you are doing and you’ll just muck it up more.” • “No, no, no, click HERE, not THERE. Jeez.” • “Look here idgit.” • Mumble/Snort

Scenes: Good News

• “Great, looks like everything is working fine. We just need to clean up some malware on there. It should be ok. Just leave it here and I think we can fix it up.” • “Well this isn’t so bad at all. We just need to get you some virus protection on there and do some updates.” • “No problem. It just needed to be registered on our network. You should be good to go.” • “Lucky for you I was here because you were messed up pretty bad. Don’t know what you think you have been downloading, but everyone and their brother was logged into your computer and using it to take over our network.” • “You should be glad I could fix you up, otherwise you would have put out for a whole new computer. You haven’t taken care of this one at all.” • “It’s working now. I have no idea why and don’t care. Even if I could tell you, you wouldn’t understand.” • Mumble/Smirk

Scenes: Bad News

“I am sorry, but your computer has been hacked and we are not able to recover your files” “You might want to contact Dell about this problem with the hardware as we are not authorized to work on it” “Your computer has low memory so it will always run slow. You could try and add more, but you may want to consider if it is more cost effective to purchase a new one” “Sorry, but you may need to buy an OS. MS indicates that your copy may not be valid so it will not update. And you must be updated to stay on our Network. If you feel that it is valid, bring in your OS disk and we can check it out with MS. If not, the Campus can sell you a valid copy at a great discount.” “Wish we could have helped more.” “Dude, your computer is hacked and all of your files are toast” “I am not touching your hardware so you can take it back to Dell or just buy a new one” “This computer is sucky slow. It is so old and worthless, you would better off tossing it in the river. I would buy a new one and trash this piece of ____. “ “Man, you got a bogus copy of MS on here. You must have stolen it. It wont update and if it don’t update, you are kicked off our network. You need to go buy a new system.” “Your screwed” Grunt/Snicker

Scenes: farewell, adiós, arrivederci, auf wiedersehen, au revoir, goodbye

• “Glad we could help” • “I don’t want to see you back here again.” • “Let us know if you have any further problems with this.” • “Stay off the porn sites.” • “You’re welcome, happy to help.” • “Later.” • “Thanks for coming by.” • “Bye.” • “Ok, take care and surf safe.” • Grunt

Your turn.

• Questions?

• Comments?

• Discussion?

To Contact us…

Ann Marie Hall The University of Memphis Residence Life 901-678-5940 [email protected]

Jim Rizzo Providence College Information Technology 401-865-1277 [email protected]

Evaluations http://www.resnetsymposium.org/resnet2007