DUDE!!

I think I may have mentioned that the Empire has been carrying on a bigtime “improve the customer experience” initiative this year, as a way of beginning to recover our customers’ former high opinion of our tech support.  As part of this, we’re encouraged (at least in Auric Tech Support we are) to send follow-up emails providing our direct contact information (names, email addresses, and direct phone extensions in clear, not in code) and letting customers know when parts have shipped, when they can expect to hear from onsite service technicians, and so on.  Sending the follow-ups isn’t mandatory, but it’s certainly encouraged.  I’ve been pretty diligent about sending them, because it not only makes the customers happier, it means I get more customers following up with me instead of calling back to the main queue, and that helps improve my case resolution rate.  The emails seem to make a big difference to the customers.  They’re astonished that somebody actually FOLLOWED UP instead of dismissing a case once the repair order’s been placed.

About mid-morning today, an email hit my inbox from a Very High Executive at the Empire—the #2 man in the company next to the Founder Himself.  This isn’t so surprising; corporate broadcast emails sometimes go out under his name.  This one didn’t look quite like a broadcast, though, so I opened it to see what now.

“What now” was a customer compliment letter sent by someone whose portable I’d worked on yesterday.  So far as I was concerned the case was a very ordinary, run-of-the-mill LCD replacement for dead pixels, but he sure didn’t think so.  He attached copies of the emails I’d sent him, and then said

Attached is a example of why the Empire is hands down, the best computer company.  This is fantastic service.  I have dealt with customers who use all types of computers, and without a doubt, the Empire has the best products and service.  You folks really have it figured out and are doing it right.  Keep up the good work.

Number Two’s cover note to me said

Sam, your clear attention to customers needs is telling, and you have made a huge fan with your consistent communication and follow through.  Well done!  We should share this note with others so that everyone can see and experience the feelling customers have when we serve them in an excellent manner.

The cc: list contained four very, VERY senior executives/directors and . . . Our Founder himself!

Well, if I’m gonna be brought to the attention of top management, I have to say this is certainly the way I’d want it to happen.  Naturally, I forwarded copies to my boss and grandboss, and within a few minutes here came my grandboss around the corner to shake my hand and congratulate me in person.  Then he forwarded the mail to the entire team (two hundred and some techs on my floor) with compliments of his own added.  After that, I had a stream of co-workers, managers, and managers-of-managers coming by my cube all afternoon to shake my hand and congratulate me on being recognized and acknowledged from so far up the organization.  (One manager said he’s never known anyone before who had gotten a personal email from #2!)

To coin a phrase, “it’s work-iiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnng . . . .”  Not only do my customers appear to be happier if I follow up, but in the employee stack ranking released last week I was, for the first time, in the top ten percent of all floor techs being ranked (number 21 of 297).  Of three measures, I was in the top twenty percent for two, and metric weighting accounted for the remaining boost.

I think they like me.