Measure Customer Service Needs to Determine How Much is Too Much?

People often ask, "What level of service should we strive to provide? Should we give 'Unbelievable!' service if our customers are not willing to pay for it?"

My answer is definitely no! You can measure customer service needs to set a reasonable level to provide. Don't go to the moon on service if your business model on the moon doesn't work. No sense "serving yourself to death," bending over backwards but going broke in the process.

You need to measure customer service costs to determine what level of service your business can provide, and match that with what your customers are willing to pay.

Take note: customers rarely put voluntary limits on their service expectations. That's why making clear service agreements is so important to you...and your customers.

You must communicate clearly what you promise to provide, and what you are not promising, too! When you measure customer service make sure to set the limits and clearly define them to keep clients satisfied. The manager of a local Internet Service Provider (ISP) approached me with this relevant complaint that demonstrates the need to measure customer service levels:

His staff go into customers' homes and offices to install modems and communications software. They train their customers to access new e-mail accounts and surf the World Wide Web.

Before his staff can leave, however, office-based customers start asking about unrelated hardware compatibility, new software upgrades and suggestions on how to fix non-working printers!

Eager home-based customers insist on help installing new games and joysticks, debugging new versions of Windows, even assistance repairing their children's Nintendo!

His staff's explanation that, "We are just an Internet Service Provider, not a computer repair service," seem to fall upon deaf ears. As far as his customers are concerned, "You are the computer people, and we have a computer problem. Now that you are in our home or office...fix it!"

One look at his brochure reveals the source of the problem and the need to measure customer service levels and clearly define them. It reads: "Enter the digital age! Modernize your life! Capture the computer advantage!"

Plenty of glittering encouragements to buy, but no clear and detailed listing of the actual service promise. To eliminate the problem, this company must clarify and specify what services they do provide...and what services they do not after they measure customer service levels and determine their own parameters.

For example:

We provide A, B and C.

We do not provide X, Y or Z in the normal service package.

We can arrange X, Y and Z for you at an additional charge, or

We have associates who can do X, Y and Z. Reliable referrals are provided on request.

Key Learning Point

Take the time to measure customer service value. Then be sure the service agreements you make with your customers and internal partners are complete and clear. Misunderstanding can lead to disappointment once delivery of your service is underway.

Action Steps

Check with your customers and staff. Find out where misunderstanding and disagreements arise. Then look closely at your proposals, contracts and service level agreements. Wherever uncertainty is found, replace it with accuracy, clarity and understanding. Take the time to measure customer service value and define limits and misunderstandings are less likely to happen.

Note: Don't use this principle to avoid regularly upgrading your service agreements. With technology you may improve the quality of your service without increasing your costs. (Your competitors are working on it now.)

Ron Kaufman is the world's leading educator and motivator for upgrading customer service and uplifting service culture. He is author of the bestselling UP Your Service! books and founder of UP Your Service! College. Get tips about how to measure customer service.

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Affectiva raises $5.7M to sense and measure emotion

Affectiva, a Massachusetts start-up spun out of the MIT Media Lab, has nabbed $5.7 million in Series B funding to help it pursue technology which helps recognize and measure human emotions. The new financing was led by Kantar, the consumer insights group for marketing firm WPP and Myrian Capital.

The money will go toward advancing work on Affectiva’s two products, which get at the issue of understanding and gauging human emotions from different directions. Affectiva is working on a technology called Affdex, a piece of software that uses webcams to recognize interest, liking and attention from users. The system uses machine learning and computer vision to understand non-verbal responses and check them against one of the largest databases of facial expressions.

The system can be used to help media companies get quick feedback and consumer reaction or it can help advertisers understand how effective a commercial is. A researcher could quickly narrow down to specific points in a video when users were most engaged or experienced some extreme emotions. Affdex’s cloud-based architecture allows it to scale easily, which democratizes this process and allows many companies to engage in the kind of market research that previously only larger firms could pursue. Affectiva is applying Affdex to media measurement first and is partnering to WPP to integrate Affdex into WPP’s other research tools.

Dave Berman, CEO of Affectiva, told me companies have gone from measuring presence and location and are now looking to understand how people are feeling. He said when done in the right way, with clear opt-in and transparency, people like to share their feelings. He said while Affdex is initially being used as a marketing tool, he sees a bright future in social networking and online gaming.

“Imagine playing video poker with an avatar that can read your face and tell if you’re bluffing,” he said. “The next big wave is interaction with social networking. Think about a social network that knew you liked something based on your face or physiological signals without you having to push a “like” button.”

Affectiva is also pursuing a biometric wrist monitor called Q Sensor that measures electrodermal activity, sometimes known as galvanic skin response, to understand how people are feeling. When combined with other sensors that measure motion and temperature, the Q Sensor can paint a pretty good picture of how relaxed, excited, calm or stressed people are. More than 100 universities and corporations are currently using the sensors to measure anxiety and engagement.

Affectiva, which has about 20 employees, previously raised $2 million in funding from its founders and the Peder Sager Wallenberg Charitable Trust, represented by Lingfield AB. And the company won a $650,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for its work. Berman said the company has a bunch of unannounced projects on the way. If they’re as innovative as what Affectiva is showing now, it’ll be interesting to see how long before someone comes along and tries to buy the company.

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