“I can’t believe it, it’s after 4 and she hasn’t called,” I thought to myself. I sat down at the computer and began to type:
Sally,
It is 4:10 and I do not think I’ve received a call from you today. Am I mistaken?
Thank you,
Anthony
I have learned that this “am I wrong?” approach is the safest way to go because, sometimes, you actually are.
A few minutes later, while I was in full Thunderdome mode with my boys (3 and 5), the phone rang.
“Hi, this is Sally from Webex.”
“Hello, Sally,” I said dryly, amid the children’s yelps and screams.
“Is now a bad time?” she asked, hearing the commotion.
“Yes Sally, it is a bad time. That’s why I asked you to call me before 3:30 today.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, in a lilting southern accent that likely takes the edge off most customer encounters. “What’s going on? You’re having some trouble uploading decks?”
“Did you talk to Satish?” I inquired, referring to the tech support guy I’d been dealing with, and who’d been copied on all my correspondence with her.
“No, I actually haven’t,” she drawled.
So, not only had the person dubbed my “customer success manager” not responded to my initial email (sent Wednesday at 10:07 AM) within 24 hours (I sent a follow up on Thursday at 6:31 PM), not only had she failed to call me during the timeframe that she asked me for, but when the call was finally made, she had failed to familiarize herself with the issue beforehand.
If she had, she could have said the following:
“Hi Anthony. I’m so sorry about the glitch you’ve been dealing with. I just got off the phone with Satish and he told me how much time you’ve spent on the phone with him. And I know this is a bug on our end that we’re working through. Now, Saitsh says the rollout that we’re having in a month will take care of this. And, as you suggested in your email, I am happy to issue a credit to your account for the time you’ve spent helping us fix this for all our customers.”
Juxtaposed with this debacle, during the exact same timeframe, I experienced a customer-service encounter at the other end of the spectrum. I have used the same computer bag for at least two years now. It’s made by a company called Solo in which I have no financial interest. About a week ago, both zippers for one of the major compartments came off the track, rendering the bag largely useless, unless I resorted to some kind of duct tape solution that would not scream: “Step Aside, Successful Gent Coming Through”.
With no expectations, I decided to reach out to the manufacturer to see what would happen. If they never responded to the form I submitted on their site, I never would have given it a second thought.
I sent the following message on Wednesday at 1:16 PM (about 3 hours after my initial email to Sally):
“Hi, I have had a Solo bag for a year or two now and the zipper recently broke. I love this bag. Any chance the company would send me a new one? If so, I could send back the old one. You would certainly have a happy customer out here if you were willing to accommodate. Please advise. Sincerely, Anthony Guerra”
Now, keep in mind this is a company with which I had just about no relationship at all, certainly not the ongoing saga I’ve got with Webex, and yet I received an extensive and accommodating reply — not weeks later, or days, and not after repeated requests, but on Wednesday at 1:41 PM. Yes, that’s right, less than a half hour later! After a few emails, including photos of the broken zipper, the company said it was sending me a new bag at no charge. I didn’t even have to return the old one.
Now, writing about personal one-off experiences — whether of the retail or healthcare variety — is rarely compelling, as we’ve all have good times and bad, but the fact that these two took place in tandem made them hard to ignore.
Interestingly, we often debate which business you are in, resulting in statements like: “Healthcare CIOs are not in the technology business, they’re in the healthcare business, and if they don’t start acting like it, they’ll become obsolete.”
Well, to a certain extent this may be true, but I also want to emphasize that, whichever of the above you prefer, you are decidedly in the customer service business. Your customers, of course, are both the clinicians whom you work to empower and the patients they seek to serve. You are, in truth, a big old “customer success manager.”
Want to be a very, very successful CIO? Adopt the customer success manager title (secretly, in your heart of hearts) and ACT LIKE IT, because the CIO who lives for his customers will thrive, regardless of title or industry.
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