Conference 7.286::digital

	Re: .0

	Great story !  I've always felt that the 'proof' in the
	service 'pudding' was a company's response when things
	went bad...

	Now, if we could just inject a bit of this into Digital's
	software organization......


	Steve H

	... ie, EIS, Software Engineering, Software Product Support (CSC's),
Installation/Start-up Services. These are different organizations with
different missions.  BTW, Customer Services owns two of those!

	And specifically, describe what would the said organization address
vis-a-vis the UPS example to improve its "service".  Please try NOT to rat-
hole about "stovepipes", "turfs", etc.  Accept the fact that currently there
ARE different orgs and differnet missions.

    We are still light years away from this kind of service, in fact we
    don't really know what service is.
    
    If DEC had been the shipper, we would have gone to great length to
    explain WHY we couldn't find the package until next week......that is,
    if anyone answered the phone!
    
    I say this as a member of Customer SERVICES.

    re:  .2
    
    I, too, am a member of Customer Services, and did not miss the
    EIS/Customer Services announcement...**however**, this merger only
    applies to the **country** staff, etc.; out here in the depths of the
    Field, EIS and CS are and will remain 2 different orgs...sorry to say.
    
    The worst part of it is, if you ask me, that people keep missing the
    point of good service, good performance in general.  The central point
    that was always very clear to me in my previous jobs (I am fairly new
    to DEC, only a year...) is this:
    
    We are all one *company*, despite the fact that we are broken down in
    to different orgs, units, and even districts.  The chain of command is
    certainly long and, at times, unclear, but the fact remains that we all
    work, in essence, for K.O., and K.O. says that we all work for *the
    customer*.  I myself rarely say that something is not my job, or say
    that I cannot help at all.  If someone (customer *or* internal) calls
    our group in error, I always try to find the right person to help the
    caller, and it is always appreciated.  I am often distressed when I
    hear DECcies talking in the my-revenue, your-revenue, my-metrics,
    your-metrics vein.  My opinion is that we should *all* be worried about
    only one thing -- customer satisfaction.  A happy customer is a
    long-term, repeat customer.  That's what counts, what will bring in the
    revenue, and knock that stock price back up where it belongs.
    
    So, sue me -- I'm new & enthused, I guess, but I have always felt this
    way about customers.  They are the reason I have a job, what I get paid
    for, so I try very hard to be good to them.  In my last job (non-DEC),
    I worked in a mortgage lending office as a *secretary*, and yet there
    was not one aspect of that business that I had not touched in my
    efforts to satisfy customers.  Unfortunately, it is never that easy at
    DEC because we are so big.  I shudder to think what I would have had to
    go through if one of my customers had called me about a shipment that
    had not arrived...I wouldn't even know where to start, but you can bet
    I'd have found out!!
    
    M.

    The good service you experienced was the result of a solitary effort by
    a UPS employee.  I don't see evidence in your anecdote that the level
    of service you've described is an institutional one for UPS.

    Federal Express which won the Malcolm Baldridge Award for Quality in
    Service provides this level of service consistently in my opinion.
    Perhaps in response to the competition of Fed Ex, UPS is striving in a
    similar way.

    One area where Digital has never retreated from its position of
    absolute arrogance is in defining what constitutes "excellent" service,
    rather than letting customers be the judge.

    This year's theme is not improving customer service but "charge the
    customer for what we give away for free".  The outlook is grim.

    re .0 You used UPS for a critical shipment !!?? 
    
    Take it from one who has been in shipping for a long time. You
    only bet your a$$ on one company - Federal Express. Remember
    the old TV ads - "Hello, Federal" ? I could 'a' _wrote_ that.
    
    Dana
    
    PS DEC has negotiated rates with Federal which are actually 
    _lower_ than UPS for next-day service. Check with Corporate
    

    Let's not start knocking UPS, or anyone else.  The point is that they
    and folks like L.L Bean make us look like amateurs.
    
    If one of our customers has a problem (remember, it's a problem if they
    think it's a problem), the first Digital employee they contact should
    be empowered to lead the resolution effort until the customer (not us)
    is happy.
    
    Conversely, the first Digital employee who says:
    
         "I'll get back to you".
         "I'll have to check with my manager."
         "What's your contract number? (or any variation of same).
         "There's no one there now".
         "Try this number...maybe they can help you."
    
    Should be summarily fired, period.
    
    I also share a previously concern about K.O.'s recent comment that we
    are going to get paid for everything we do.  A sure formula for
    failure.

	... enough to reply to the last few, and you provided the "ice"! :>)

	We are in BUSINESS to TAKE IN more MONEY that we SPEND!  We will do
that IF what we have to SELL is of VALUE to the CUSTOMER.  We need to be
looking at the SERVICES we can provide in the light of VALUE, and not be
afraid to ASK for PAYMENT for VALUE.  All the customer can do is say "OK" or
"No Way". If the latter, let good business judgement prevail, if the former,
let quality service delivery prevail!

	I wish we could find a replacement slogan for "Do the right thing!",
or else explain to everyone including customers that it's a two-way street,
we'll do the right thing by them, if they do the right thing by us!  That's
key to being business "partners" (another term I think we mis-use!).

	OK, now I can sleep tonight! :>)

>    I worked, prior to DIGITAL, for a wonderful company who gave away
>    *lots* of service... we went belly up with the best customer sat rating
>    in the industry.  
>    
>    mdh


	No doubt this can happen...but, there's this extreme, and
	Digital.

	I think the customer should get what he pays for when he buys
	hardware or software services from us.

	I think he should get a response in something under 2 years
	when he submits a Software Performance Report.

	I think that he should never get an answer to an Software
	Performance Report that describes a *verified* bug that says 
	something like:

	   "You should re-code your application so that it doesn't 
	    use this feature of the product."

	I think that when a product's poor quality hits a customer
	hard, that Digital should be prepared to send high-level
	folks to the customer site if necessary.  Waiting for
	some vaunted 'process' to work while customers' businesses
	are being hurt is nuts.

	I think that when a customer buys DECservice ( premium hardware
	repair service ) support contracts for his systems with
	2 or 4 hour committed response times, the local field
	service operation should keep parts and repair kits locally.


	We don't have to give away the store, but we ought to give
	a dollar's worth of service for every dollar billed on the
	invoice....

	Steve H

    A simple summary seems to me to be:
    
    1. 	Deliver what we sell
    
    2. 	Charge for additional services
    
    Is our difficulty perhaps that as a company we find it so hard to do
    the first that we cannot even define the second?
    
    Or is this just a down-under perspective?
    
    david
    	

    ...IS SET BY THE PERSON AT THE TOP!
    
    re .9:
    
>    Conversely, the first Digital employee who says:
>    
>         "I'll get back to you".
>         "I'll have to check with my manager."
>         "What's your contract number? (or any variation of same).
>         "There's no one there now".
>         "Try this number...maybe they can help you."
>    
>    Should be summarily fired, period.
    
    Its convenient.  It sounds company.  But, its pure, unadulterated
    *&^%$#!   Certainly not in every case, but the above statements sure
    sound like the kind of behavior you get when you manage to the
    short-term dollar level, and reward revenue generation to the exclusion
    of all else.  If you've run up against the kind of statements above,
    the person that should be "summarily fired" is the one that created an
    atmosphere where people are so unempowered that they have to "check
    with my manager", or pawn off "unproductive" activities.
    
    As someone else said very aptly elsewhere in this notesfile - "You get
    the behavior you reward."  Stop trying to shoot the MESSENGER just
    because you don't like the MESSAGE.

	... list:  "Propose for sale ONLY what we can deliver!"  If this is
not done, you definitely have a problem doing the second item, and won't even
be allowed to try the third!

re. Note 1324.9  
    COOKIE::LENNARD                                      
    
    >Let's not start knocking UPS, or anyone else.  The point is that they
    >and folks like L.L Bean make us look like amateurs.
    
    Since this note was started by someone praising UPS as an example to
    follow, it stands that we should be focusing on all aspects of that
    company, and making sure we're not buying a 'pig in a poke'.
    
    1st. Even putting UPS in the same sentence with LL Bean is heresy, IMO.
         Ever wonder why LL Bean does *not* use UPS ?
    2nd. Ever try to trace a missing UPS shipment ? If you're not the  
         shipper they won't even _talk_ to you. "I'm sorry, a request for
         trace must come from the shipper, not the consignee."
    3rd. Ever watch their management style ? Management by constant
         pressure. How would you like to have your supervisor follow
         you with a _stopwatch_ every so often ? Morale building ?
    
    

re >  <<< Note 1324.16 by SA1794::CHARBONND "Fred was right - YABBADABBADOOO!" >>>
    
>    1st. Even putting UPS in the same sentence with LL Bean is heresy, IMO.
>         Ever wonder why LL Bean does *not* use UPS ?
    
    In the interest of fairness, LLBean DOES use UPS.  EVERY LLBean shipment
    we have ever received (usually a half dozen or so a year) comes UPS.
    
Dave    

    

    re .17 Where do you live ? Every LLBean shipment I've ever seen
    was Parcel Post.

    re .14 ---- you're right, and my statement was ill-advised.  Agree
    strongly that it is a short-sighted, make-the-numbers-at-any-cost
    management structure that got us in this mess.
    
    I am not optimistic that the same bad actors will get us out of this
    quandry.  What's really scary is when I hear these guys still talking
    about getting back to the old days of fast growth.  It ain't gonna
    happen.

    re .18
    
    I live in Nashua.

LL Bean tells me they use both the Post Office and UPS.

I have always found UPS to be maddeningly inflexible, to the point that i
won't deal with them at all.

But your example says a lot for the effect that one employee can have on
one's perception of a company.  That seems like it should tie in to the
"employee empowerment" theme that keeps showing up around here...

								paul

    Since when did this become the "PACKAGE SHIPPING" conference?
    
    Let's leave it that UPS has an inconsistent pattern of customer service
    and move on.

    read 0. again :

    "package was lost in the UPS system"
    "we contacted UPS" etc.

    The thing was lost and they found it, what's the deal, where is the
    service ? Can you imagine a letter praising DEC's service organization
    just because a CS engineer bust his ... to restore a disk corrupted during
    preventive maintenance ? 

    I know of may cases when we actually spent a *lot* of time isolating
    problems in third party products/services just because we are often 
    service minded nice guys. 

    But whole this discussion is so full of generalization that it just
    doesn't make sense ( except obviously this contribution .-)

    						w

I'm not sure what this note is trying to prove, but having moonlighted at UPS
whilst trying to survive the 'Massachusetts Miracle', I couldn't resist
tossing in my two cents...

These guys talk a good line about quality and all that, but the bottom line
was always speed, speed, and more speed.  I saw many a crushed, torn, and
otherwise mutilated box while stuffing those feeder trucks to the very top.

I have a hard time figuring out how they traced the boxes anywhere (unless it 
was some sort of specially tagged air-freight or something).  The boxes I 
handled had no ID other than the address.

To be fair, most of the damaged boxes got that way because of poor packing by
whomever sent the box, but to me, that is no excuse.

/mlm

(I suppose the moral of this tale from a DEC perspective is that you cannot
just preach quality, you have to be willing to sacrifice some other metric
at times, in this case speed of loading trailers, to get it...  I always 
assumed that UPS figured the lost efficiency of handling the more fragile
packages carefully outweighed the damage ne by a few damage claims and d
lost good will)

    The point is that when things go wrong it means a lot to the customer
    that some identifiable human being is making an extra effort to solve
    the problem.  The author of .0 is much more likely to use UPS because
    of the perceived extra effort made by one person to find the missing
    package.
    
    I've been involved in several customer problem situations, and the fact
    that someone from DEC (me, or someone else from my very small group)
    made a long, inconvenient trip on short notice and spend hours or days
    working the problem until it was solved made a *big* difference to the
    customer.
    
    This is where Big Blue really shines.  One of the reasons "noone ever
    got fired buying IBM", is the perception their customers have that when
    a bad problem hits them, IBM will do whatever it takes to fix the
    problem.  With DEC the perception is that it depends on the
    individual(s) involved, some are better than others.
    

re: .0:

May I suggest you re-write your "letter of appreciation," sending the
original to the employee and a copy to UPS' c.e.o. (or similar).  If
nothing else, this will filter down to the employee's supervisor, and
may encourage someone else to bust a gut on our (i.e., my) behalf.

re: service in general -- look at the personal computer mail-order software
market; it is dominated by one company (MacConnection/PC Connection) that

-- delivers overnight, even Saturday, for $3.00/order
-- guarantees what they sell.
-- offers good quality technical support on the phone (and doesn't ask
   if you bought the software from them).

It might cost a lot, but the alternative might be more expensive.

Martin.

I think the key to our success is to mix some basic common sense with our 
credo of "doing the Right Thing!".

1. Be clear on what you are selling the customer.

2. Make sure you deliver what you sell them plus a little extra.

3. React swiftly and with enthusiasm to any customer complaints or problems.


My personal work philosophy is summed up in three words (also used by Chrysler):

		SATISFY THE CUSTOMER!

You'll notice is doesn't say or imply "generate revenue at any cost" or
"only provide services that the customer pays for".

I entered one of our major customer accounts exactly one year ago as a 
full-time program manager for a VAX Consolidation proposal at NO COST TO THE
CUSTOMER. Within 6 months we certed a $4.2M order with more orders expected,
so I know my philosophy works. 

I have gone head-to-head with the stovepipes that would rather have a $25K 
service delivery order that very well could have jeopardized the total sale.

And I do believe that anyone who utters any of the following internally or to 
a customer should be severely reprimanded:

	"Its not my job"

	"Let me get back to you" (without a timeframe as to when that will be)

	"There is nothing we can do to solve your problem"

	"Call the CSC"

	"The customer is {wrong, not using our services/products correctly,
	 too hard to deal with and thus not worth the effort}"

If a customer comes to any one of us for help, we should lead the effort to 
get their problem solved (this doesn't necessarily mean we solve it, but we 
sure as hell don't just forward them off to some other part of Digital).

As Tom Peters once described: He lost his luggage on the way to Europe... But 
he didn't care because the airline reacted so well to the problem... And the 
end result was that he came away with a greatly improved opinion of the airline.

Regards,

Jim Mickol
Sales Support Consultant
Rochester, NY

>         <<< Note 1324.28 by BRULE::MICKOL "You can call me Keno..." >>>
>                           -< Its really simple... >-

> I entered one of our major customer accounts exactly one year ago as a 
> full-time program manager for a VAX Consolidation proposal at NO COST TO THE
> CUSTOMER. Within 6 months we certed a $4.2M order with more orders expected,
> so I know my philosophy works. 

Okay, it worked for you in this instance.
What I've heard Ken discuss is that we often do this, spending a couple of
hundred thousand dollars is designing a system or solution, and we sometimes 
lose the deal.  And more seriously, we lose the deal to somebody who
uses our solution in concert with another vendor.

It's like when Joe Consumer goes into the high-priced stereo shoppe
and gets hours of expert help configuring a $6000 stereo system that he then
buys for $2000 at the super-discount store down the street.

The other aspect is when we used to put $100,000 of effort into designing
a solution that leveraged $1,000,000 hardware sale.
Now that the equivalent hardware only costs $200,000, we can't afford that
degree of leverage any more.

THAT'S what I hear Ken saying when he says charge for what we now give away.

- tom]

re: .24
    
    >The thing was lost and they found it, what's the deal, where is the
    >service ? Can you imagine a letter praising DEC's service organization
    >just because a CS engineer bust his ... to restore a disk corrupted during
    >preventive maintenance ? 

    The deal is that one individual firmly planted a lasting impression on
    a customer.  Sure, he was only doing his job.  Sure, they never should
    have lost the package.  But, the manner in which this one employee
    treated his customer, by assuming ownership of the problem, resolving
    it quickly, and to the customer's total satisfaction *IS* the issue. 
    If ALL UPS employees were like that, then it'd probably be Federal
    Express trying to "catch up".
    
    The point is, ONE individual customer, or group, or office, or team CAN
    make a difference...and that difference can (and often will) lead to
    additional revenue.
    
    Years ago (around 1983/84) one of the largest automobile insurance
    companies in the country reluctantly "took a chance" with DEC and it's
    office automation software.  That company was, and still is, a LARGE
    costomer of IBM... to the tune of millions of bucks.  They started with
    just one VAX 11780 and a couple of RM05s and ethernet.  The VAX broke,
    and the local FS manager made the decision to replace the entire '780,
    eating the cost of the old one (and installing it in the DEC office
    until it could be repaired).  That decicive act, coupled with a genuine
    effort on the FEs in the office to win the customer, has resulted in
    the insurance company staying with DEC through some very tough times,
    and they are now a large national account, and spend a lot of money
    with us.  (this was not MY account, so I feel free to toot someone
    elses' horn... Wayne Grundy and Juan Benetes in particular)

    I was hired by Wayne for one reason... to FIX THE CUSTOMER.  Servicing
    his computer was only part of that job.
    
    tony
    

    There is nothing wrong in being responsive to exceptions, but it is
    better not to have exceptions. This was my ( maybe overstated ) point.
    A single incident like yours would not make me go with UPS for the rest
    of my life.

    			wlodek

    Providing the kind of up-front program/project management discussed
    previously, at no cost, is an absolute requirement in the kind of big
    systems integration etc., contracts we claim to be going after.
    
    If you try to charge customers for this service, you might as well not
    even get involved.
    
    This has been an absolute fact of life in the government procurement
    business since day one.  I don't know why it should be so painful to
    apply it to our commercial endeavors.
    
    The costs obviously get hidden in the price of whatever it is we want
    to sell.  If you put tens of thou into unfront work, and then discount
    like crazy....well I guess you're in the wrong business.  

	... until I read the last paragraph!  That is our problem, we haven't
learned how to price for VALUE!  If the management team Jim Mickol works with
didn't take that 6 months of support into account when they figured the
allowance structure, they are doing the company a disservice IMHO!  If they
don't have a plan to GET some profitable revenue for these valuable services
in the future, ditto!  Did you know that Anderson (and probably most of the
other Big x) routinely charge time for a partner in the neighborhood of $300
per hour on projects?  And the customers KNOW it!  Our Program Managers do
just about the same job for DEC as a partner does for Anderson.  However, a
partner probably has more control over his destiny than our PM's do! :>)

	I don't disagree with the need for up-front investments.  But invest-
ments were made to have a return on, too, so let's get all the return we can!