Marketing Innovation

Opportunity for Innovation -- the North Carolina DMV

My son and I just had the experience that is uniquely the DMV -- a one hour, fifty minute long wait to renew our licenses, which took precisely 3 minutes.   

Let’s start with the facility: There were three active stations (out of eleven total). Based on counting ceiling tiles, the room was 30’ wide by 88’ long. There are 40 gray chairs and eight green chairs. The chairs were filled, and there was a line that averaged 20 people long pretty much the entire time we were there.  When we arrived, we were given ticket numbers A202 and A203, and a pictographic list of all the road signs in use in North Carolina. (The only requirements for license renewal is that you pass an eye exam, and can correctly identify 12 road signs, four of them by shape only.) An overhead sign said that the examiners were currently on ticket A170. I was worried that if I memorized all the signs too early, I’d forget them by the time my ticket was called.

We were told that we were to stand in line until a spot opened up in the gray chairs, and then we were required to take that seat. We could not sit in the green chairs. As we moved toward the front of the line, we noticed that there were also B-series and C-series tickets. So the simple assumption that we had only 32 people ahead of us was optimistic. My son got a seat in the front, and I got a seat in the back.

There were two video screens hanging from the ceiling at the front of the group of gray chairs, hanging directly over the green chairs, in fact. (The green chairs are where you went to sit after passing the test but before getting your picture made.) The video screens displayed an 11-minute long clip that had weather, local traffic maps, a message that drunk driving was bad, an ad for a law firm that specialized in license suspension and revocation cases, another ad for a firm that made duplicate keys, and an odd assortment of factoids, including that African elephants only have four teeth with which to chew their food, that the Sahara Desert is roughly the size of the continental US, or Europe, and that Eva Longoria and her husband went out to dinner on Monday night. The thing about elephant teeth was particularly intriguing, since there would presumably be two on each side, one top and one bottom, meaning that each tooth would have to be about the size of a cinder block.

We waited for forty minutes, wondering about elephant teeth, and also wondering why anyone would care whether or not Eva Longoria and her husband went out to dinner, texting back and forth as the numbers changed up on the overhead screen. 

“Only 27 more to go”, I texted when A175 went up.  

“Only?”, he texted back.

Suddenly, the lady who was tending the line and handing out tickets made an announcement. “The average wait time is 62 minutes. This is a first come, first serve department. The A tickets are the express tickets, and the B and C tickets will have to wait longer.”  

Thank goodness the A-tickets were express. However, just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse, a baby started to scream. At least the air conditioning worked, and it struck me then: There is a huge opportunity for innovation here!

We waited one hour and fifty minutes to go through a three minute process. That isn’t efficient. How could this be improved? How about a kiosk that asked multiple choice questions, had a camera, and a credit card swipe? I could even conceive that this could be done at home, over the internet, if there weren’t concerns that people would get help with the test. (Not that giving you a sheet with all the answers on it while you waited indicated that they were really plumbing the depths of your knowledge with this test.)

I texted this to my son, who responded that if we sped this up, we would be depriving people of the soul-crushing “experience” we were having.  Good point.

Anyway, I started a conversation with the fellow on my left, Kenneth, an older man who was passing the time reading the DMV handbook. I asked him if he thought that automation with a kiosk would be a good solution. He said yes, and there were probably a lot of ways to improve the overall situation as well. The lady on my other side said that she thought it would be a great idea to have an ATM nearby, especially since the DMV only takes cash and check. Vending machines would be a nice idea, and we thought video poker games would help pass the time, and both of these ideas would inevitably lead to more revenue for the state.

Not surprisingly, I am not the first person to think this way. Working on my Droid, I found a 2004 article by Lisa Kerner of kioskmarketplace.com identified many places that kiosk can be used for “line busting”, including the Nevada DMV:

The Nevada Department of Transportation uses kiosks for self-service license renewals, shortening wait time from one hour down to 15 minutes, reported Karla Guarino, marketing director for KIOSK InformationSystems. As in this example, a line-busting kiosk often serves as form, pen and clerk.

According to Guarino, lines at the Nevada DOT are reduced by as much as 30 percent, and have led to improved customer service. This can be attributed to the fact that while kiosks shorten lines, they also offer a consistent customer experience. A kiosk is never in a bad mood and, in retail environments, it doesn’t forget to suggest additional merchandise. Guarino added that kiosks often lead to significant increases in new product and promotional item sales.

While I’m not sure what sort of “new product and promotional items” are for sale at the Nevada DMV offices (perhaps “I ♥ the DMV” hats and T-shirts), the fact that the kiosks were successful is instructive. California and Connecticut are reportedly considering kiosks as well.

It costs $32 to renew a license, so I would think that the state would want to get as many $32 fees processed per hour (let’s call them “inventory turns”.) My count showed that there were 60 people waiting at any given point in my nearly two hours there, so there was about $2000 out there waiting to be collected. With 10 kiosks, the 60 people could have been done in 30 minutes total. If we assume that the 60 people arrived evenly over the two hours, then that is one person every two minutes. We'd only need about four kiosks to assure there should be no waiting under those circumstances.

Maybe we should just turn the whole thing into a drive through operation!

P.S.  I shook hands with Kenneth after finishing up, and said, “I’ve enjoyed the time we spent together!” He laughed, and said something very interesting: “It is strange the kind of bond people form in situations like this!”   I wonder if he thought that a session at the DMV was some sort of hostage situation!

Apple iTunes Music Store: Customer Service Done Right

Just when you've had your fill of not-so-good customer service experiences, something comes along to make you happy you do business with certain companies. 

For some reason, I've been struck with the urge to create unique ringtones for various people on my iPhone.  You can create them using iTunes from certain songs.  I went to try it out by creating a short clip from Van Halen's "Running with the Devil", and it is a pretty cool process -- editing loops to use as ringtones.  The problem was that I wasn't able to actually buy them.  I'd go through all the steps, click on the "Buy" button, and nothing would happen.  I read forums and knowledge bases, but nothing.  So I wrote to Apple.  Here's the correspondence back from them, and my replies.

On Jun 11, 2008, at 2:09 PM, iTunes Store wrote:

Dear Greg,

I understand that you have been unable to create a ring tone from the iTunes Store. I can imagine how this may be frustrating. My name is Alyssa and I will be more than happy to assist you today.

To create ringtones, you must purchase a ringtone-eligible song, create a ringtone from it, and then purchase the ringtone. The ringtone purchase is separate from the original song purchase.

Follow these steps to create a ringtone:
[Multistep process follows, which is just a repeat of the instructions I followed on the iTunes Music Store.]

Very nice tone. No excuses and explanations, just friendly advice and concern. I had already followed those steps, so I hit "Reply" (even though the return address was iTunesStoreSupport@apple.com -- it didn't look like Alyssa's personal account) and sent this:

Alyssa,

I have followed all those steps, but when I click on the "buy" button in step 6, nothing happens.  I'm running iTunes 7.6.2.

I frankly didn't expect anything because I thought that my email would go into some sort of bulk trash can.  Surprisingly, Alyssa wrote back:

On Jun 12, 2008, at 11:06 AM, iTunes Store wrote:

Hello Greg,

I am sorry to learn that you are still unable to purchase a ring tone.  I'm sure you are anxious to have this issue resolved as soon as possible.

This is most likely because you have yet to agree to the updated terms of sales on the iTunes Store. To resolve this issue, please download a free song form the iTunes Store and agree to the terms of sales. Once this has been done, I trust you will be able to purchase your ringtone.

I apologize for the inconvenience, Greg. Have a wonderful day.

Sincerely,

Alyssa
iTunes Store Customer Support

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.

That was, indeed, the problem, and the solution worked great!  A little odd, but successful.  So I replied again:

That did the trick!  Thanks, Alyssa!

Greg

This time, I really didn't expect an answer.  I simply wrote to let her know it worked; maybe she'd get a charge out of solving a problem and knowing that I was grateful.  I misjudged my new friend:

On Jun 12, 2008, at 3:33 PM, iTunes Store wrote:

Dear Greg,

You're very welcome. I'm glad to hear that you are now able to purchase a ringtone.

Nothing makes Apple happier than to hear that we have pleased our customers. I hope that you continue to enjoy the iTunes Store.

Enjoy your new ringtone, Greg and have a wonderful day.

Sincerely,

Alyssa
iTunes Store Customer Support
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.

On top of great products, great design, and a great customer experience, add in great customer service to the list of reasons that I'll stick with Apple.

Time Warner Cable: Explanation

I recently posted about a service outage with my Internet Service Provider, Time Warner.  Unexpectedly, I got a comment from a TWC representative, inviting me to write.  Here's what he wrote:

I just want to assure you that we are paying attention. I'm sorry that you had a frustrating experience with our customer service. We strive to make the system as easy to use as possible and provide our customer service representatives with the information to correct issues as quickly as possible. Please feel free to contact me directly if the issue is not resolved to your satisfaction.

Alex Dudley
Alex.dudley@twcable.com

I took him up on his offer, sending this note:

Alex,

Thank you for taking the time to comment on my blog post.  I'd be interested in learning more about why my experience ever happened in the first place, however. 

I posed some questions at the end of the post that I'd appreciate if you could address.   In addition, I'd be interested to know whether or not there is a system in place by which the customer service reps can try and "make things right", perhaps by offering a free month of service, or something else along those lines.  Also, is there a way that technicians can propose new ideas to management in a way that would improve service?  After all, you guys are the ones closest to the customer, and probably have a whole bunch of ways to improve service and lower costs at the same time.

You write:  "We strive to make the system as easy to use as possible and provide our customer service representatives with the information to correct issues as quickly as possible."  I would say that the system still needs improvement.  It was not easy to use (it took me forever to find the number in the first place, and then I had to enter in my phone number, and then give it to EACH of the four techs I talked to.  And you clearly had not provided the customer service representatives with the information to correct issues as quickly as possible.

I've been a customer of TWC for many years, since it was first installed in this area.  I seem to remember, back in the early days, if there was an outage, and I called in, the answering message would say things like "There is an outage in North Raleigh.  We are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible."  I'd know what was going on, hang up, and wait.  Total transaction time:  under a minute.  Total investment by TWC?  Probably under a minute to record the message.  Certainly not 36 minutes and four paid technicians.  Customer happiness level:  not great (after all, there is no service) but not totally frustrated about wasting that much time.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Greg

Here's his reply:

Greg-
 
I'll look into why the outage occurred.  For the record, I am here at corporate, and can assure you that we do solicit and get feedback from CSRs.  As far as generally improving the system, we focus on three areas.  First, we want to invest in customer self-help technologies, things like chat help and email help, both of which are coming soon.  Second, we need to enhance the way our CRSs view the information.  We are rolling out a new desktop application that will put more information at their fingertips (without having to scroll through multiple screens to find simple data points about an account).  Third, we are continually trying to better train our employees, both before they start and on an ongoing basis.  Obviously, none of these is a panacea, but together we believe that they can help improve the experience.  There will always be room for improvement.  And yes, CSRs are allowed to offer "make-goods" if the customer experience warrants it.
 
Regarding your question about why, a while back, you could just call and there would be a message playing about an outage and the whole thing would take less than a minute, the difference is that we now offer three different products, as opposed to just one.  The fact that your internet service was out, but not your video complicates the matter.  I can assure you that if there had been some sort of accident where a main fiber trunk line were cut and ALL TWC services were out in an area, such a message would play.  But when video is working, but not data, it takes some time to locate the problem, diagnose and estimate repair time.
 
As far as the need to transfer you among several CSRs, that too, is a result of the increased complexity of our product offering.  Imagine sitting in a call center and when the phone rings the number of possible issues with which you (as a TWC CSR) can be faced.  You can be called about an internet outage, the next caller wants HBO and the third can't figure out why their phone service isn't working (sometimes because their cordless phone is out of batteries!).  All of this is to say that our CSRs have a tough job.  We are trying to make it easier on them (and thus on our customers).  Doing so is a process, not an event.  Mostly though, I commented because I want you (and others) to know that we are listening, we do care, we know you're frustrated and we're constantly working on the problem.  At any rate, thanks for writing and don't hesitate to contact me in the future.
 
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Time Warner Cable: Please Hold.

I've written about exceptional customer service.  Great customer service is a thrill to be on the receiving end of.   Egregious customer service?  Not so much.  Unfortunately, I got some today from my cable provider, TimeWarner Cable.  (Slogan:  "The Power of You.^TM")

I was without Internet service for over 15 hours today.  I got up at 5:30 AM to find the little green power light on the modem glowing steadily and the "receive" light blinking.  No service.  I power cycled the modem (they always tell you to do that anyway, so I thought I'd get that taken care of) and checked the TV to see if there was a signal there.  (There was.)

I'm generally a patient person, so I waited a few hours in the hope that service would be restored.  It wasn't, so around 9AM I decided to call it in.  I had no phone number to call, so I got on my iPhone, fired up Safari, typed in www.nc.rr.com, and hit enter.

That isn't the right URL.  It redirects to news14.com, which has no information about technical support on it.  I clicked on TimeWarner graphic in the upper right hand corner of the page and got another page that had no contact information, either, but there was a "Customer Service" button.  Clicking that took me to yet another page with link after link to this and that FAQ, along with options to have "LIVE CHAT!" (only from 12-7 PM, though), and still no telephone number.  I clicked the "Contact Us" link on the bottom right of the page, and got another page with (finally!) a number, again tucked way down at the bottom.  So I called it -- (800) 892-2253.

Mrs. Automated Voice answered and said that if I wanted to proceed in English, press "1".  OK, pressed "1".  Mrs. Voice then said that I would be connected to the next available sales rep.  Sales rep?  She went on to say that if I wanted technical assistance or to return equipment, press "1" again.  OK, pressed "1" again.  She then wanted to know if I was calling from my home number, and, since I wasn't (digital phone service requires an active internet connection), to enter my home phone number, including area code, followed by the pound sign.  Entered all that in, wondering, if every one of the hundreds of millions of phone numbers in the US has exactly ten digits, why was the pound sign needed? 

The next step was to listen to Mr. Automated Voice tell me about all the wondrous things that the digital communications industry, and in particular Time Warner, has to offer me.  I assume that connectivity is a given.  After about a minute, he'd said his piece, and I got to hear nice classical music with really, really lousy fidelity, even for a phone.  After another few minutes went by, a nice, pleasant woman with a slight accent came on the line and asked me for my home phone number (again), my name, the name the account is in, and my address.  She then said she would run a test, and came back a few minutes later and said that there was a "server problem" of some sort and it was "being worked on".  I thanked her, she thanked me for choosing Time Warner (like there are so many options in cable service), and we hung up.

Six more hours went by, and the situation hadn't changed, so I decided (for some reason) to call it in again.  Had the same interaction with Mrs. and Mr. Automated Voice, and then a real woman answered.  She asked me for my phone number, my address, my name, the name of the account holder (who happens to be my wife), and the last four digits of her Social Security number.  She then ran some tests, said she needed to put me on hold, did so, and apparently went on break.   More classical music.

Five minutes went by, and a guy named Mark picked up the phone and said, "How can I help you?"  I was a little surprised, so I explained that I was on hold because the previous tech had been running some tests, and he said, "Can I please have your phone number?"  I gave it to him, a little exasperated.  He then wanted my name, my address, and the name of the account holder, and how I was related to the account holder.  He said that he would run some tests, and came back a few minutes later and said he needed to put me on hold.  He did, and then Mr. Automated Voice came on and said that I should first try the Time Warner website for technical assistance.  (Just in case anyone at Time Warner customer service reads this, it is very irritating to be told to access the web when you can't access the web.)  A couple minutes later Mark came back on, and said that I needed to talk to somebody at the national desk.  He transfered my call.

Another woman with a slight accent picked up the call and identified herself as Christine, and asked me for my phone number, my address, my preferred email address, and the name of the account holder.  She said that she needed to run some tests and put me on hold.  She came back on and asked me if I had power cycled the modem -- "you know, turned it off and on again".  I assured her I had.  "And that didn't fix it?"  No, it didn't.  "Hmmm.  Do you have a router?"  Yes, I do.  "What kind?"  It's a Netgear something or other.  "And you bought that from Time Warner?"  No, I bought it elsewhere.  "I see.  Is your modem connected directly to the cable or the router?"  The cable.  I then explained everything that had gone on, that this was clearly a service problem coming into the house, or a modem problem.  "I see.  You need to talk to someone at the local level." 

This was already beyond ridiculous, but hold on -- it gets better.  OK, worse.

She gave me a "ticket number" and a "direct dial line" to call her back if I got disconnected while she transfered me back to the local guys.  OK, great.  Wrote all that down.

Got transfered to the local support pool, where a guy answered the phone and asked for my phone number.  My Disgruntlement Index was pretty high -- I'd been on the phone for just over 25 minutes at this point -- so I told him that I'd been on the phone for just over 25 minutes, had talked to three different people already, all of whom asked me the same things, ran tests, and then transfered me to someone else, and the last person gave me a ticket number that was supposed to stay open so that he, the local guy, could "see all the notes".  He said that he WAS the local guy, had no idea what a "ticket number" was, and needed my phone number.  So I gave it to him, and pre-emptively gave him my address, the account holder, the last four digits of her social security number AND her city of birth.  He said that he needed to run some tests and put me on hold.  This time, there was a whole family of Automated Voices assuring me that I was important and then refuting that by telling me to hold on longer.

Man #1:  "Your call is important to us.  Please hold for the next available operator."  Twenty or so seconds pass.

Woman #1:  "Thank you for waiting. Please hold for the next available operator."  Another twenty seconds.

Man #2:  "Your call is VERY important to us.  Please hold for the next available operator."  A further twenty seconds.

Woman #2:  "We appreciate your patience.  When we get to you, be assured that we will spend as much time as it takes to fix your problem.  Please hold for the next available operator."

Mercifully, my local guy came back on the line. 

"There's a service outage in your area," he said.  "They've been working on it since this morning.  It's not just you -- it's a pretty big area."

For one of the few times in my life, I was speechless.  I'd been on the phone for 36 minutes, talked to four separate people (on at least two separate continents, by my figuring, including the "national desk"), and NO ONE COULD TELL ME THAT THERE WAS A SERVICE OUTAGE BEFORE THIS?

Now I realize that 36 minutes pales in comparison to other sorry tales of customer service, but it strikes me that something as basic as a major service outage -- one that had been going on for about fourteen hours by this point and had supposedly been actively worked on for a good portion of that time -- would have been fairly easy to detect.  And perhaps being served by four separate people in 36 minutes constitutes some sort of great performance in call center metrics, but I would beg to differ.

So I asked him, fairly nicely, "Why couldn't any one of the previous three people tell me that there was a service outage?"  He said that he didn't know who else I talked to so he couldn't answer that.  "Why have I been on the phone for 36 minutes to find out something so basic?"  He didn't know that, either, but that was, in fact, the state of affairs, and no, he didn't know how much longer it would be.  "They try to have things like that fixed in under a day," he offered, helpfully.  (Note the use of the word "they" -- no one took any ownership of this problem.)

My questions continued in my mind:   How could he find this out and the first three techs couldn't?  Why wasn't this a message when I called in the first place?  Why didn't Mrs. Voice say, "There is a service outage in North Raleigh and we don't know when it will be fixed."?

Amazing. 

I wonder where the root of the problem is -- the training, the tools to detect service outages, the communication systems, or the fundamental lack of belief in providing good customer service?  These people seemed to be trying (after all, my calls may have been monitored for quality purposes), and I don't hold it against them.  I hold it against the company that put the system in place.

Clearly, some room for innovation in TWC customer service exists. 

Until then, please hold.

Customer Service From A Most Unlikely Source

I never thought I'd write an entry about good -- even great -- customer service from a company that I absolutely do not want to do business with.  This company has invaded my privacy at highly inconvenient hours, even after I've told the federal government that I don't want to hear from them.

If you guessed "telemarketers", you'd be right, and a firm called E-Tech, Inc. (formerly Effective Teleservices, Inc.) in particular.  The motto of this company is "Playing by the rules".  Interesting.

In general, the Federal Do-No-Call register has worked well for us.  We receive virtually no unwanted phone calls.  However, starting in late August, the caller ID information said "Nacogdoches, TX" and the number was (936) 559-2200.  Our typical response is to let the machine get calls like that, and, if it is important, we'll pick up during the message.  (We've never had to do that.  None of them leave messages.)  However, the persistence of these Nacogdochians was wearing on me -- they were calling a couple of times a day.

Google has a neat feature.  Actually, Google has many neat features, but the one I used here was the reverse lookup.  If you type in a phone number into the search bar, odds are good that Google will find who it belongs to.  And in this case, the first hit was a "Contact Us" page on the Effective Teleservices website.  On this page is an entry for the "compliance officer", with five ways to contact.  I chose email, and sent a note at 11:36 AM on Friday, September 8th asking that my phone number be removed from their database. 

I will admit that this exercise was more to make me feel better than to actually accomplish anything.  My expectation level for a satisfactory resolution ranged from low to zero.

At 4:10 PM that afternoon, I received a response from Mary Sommers at E-tech.  Here's the text:

Your number has been entered into our Do Not Call application for removal which will take approximately 24 to 48 hours. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience you have experienced.

Thanks,
Etech, Inc.
Mary Sommers

I was impressed.  I sent back a quick "thank you" note to Mary.  Score one for E-Tech.

Telemarketing is an interesting industry.  They basically cram the three phases of the sales process (creating awareness of an offering, gaining consideration for purchase, and converting to a sale) into 10 seconds or less. The call is not only unsolicited, but intrusive.  After all, this is an industry that has inspired federal legistation (one of the most wildly popular pieces of law, in fact) to prevent them from practicing their fundamental business model.

The fact that this is ever successful is remarkable.  The fact that it has grown into an enormous industry boggles the mind.  However...upon further reflection, the Do-Not-Call registries are actually a taxpayer-subsidized way to improve their segmentation.  By having a population self UN-select themselves from the pool of prospective callees, you should dramatically improve your odds of connecting with someone who will at least not hang up right away.  The fact that E-Tech maintains their own Do-Not-Call database supports that line of thought.

Now for the very simple innovation in customer service that turned me into an E-Tech fan:  At 10:36 AM on September 11th, I got a followup note from Mary Sommers:

Greg,

Checked the application and your number has been removed from all our call lists.  Please let me know if you receive any further unwanted calls from us.

Thanks,
Etech, Inc.
Mary Sommers

Wow!

I am the most satisfied non-customer that E-Tech has, and I think that they handled the situation extremely well.  The simple act of following up made all the difference.  Unfortunately, that's pretty innovative. 

It appears that E-Tech lives up to their promise and does, indeed, "play by the rules."  Kudos to them, and a great lesson, too.