Learning From the Customer: Critical Customer Incidents

The following are based on real events in two small businesses:

Scenario 1

It’s 5:30pm. John, a customer support specialist at a small computer networking firm receives an urgent call from the president of a nearby brokerage firm. Their client server network has crashed which will have a financially devastating impact on their service tomorrow morning since the firm is introducing an IPO to its’ clientele. John was about to leave for the day but the president sounds frantic. Rather than defer the president until tomorrow (or to a competitor) John places a series of calls to their hardware supplier. They have a server but John will need to drive there to get it – about two hours away. Before doing so he calls his manager who calls goes to the brokerage firm to see if he can retrieve the server files while John drives to pick up the necessary hardware. John and his manager work throughout the evening to restore the client server network. By morning all is up and running. The president of the brokerage firm is so pleased he awards all future network maintenance and upgrades to John’s firm. John and his manager review the event and decide to market an emergency networking service to all their clients. This is a critical customer incident.

Scenario 2

Peter works at the paint counter of a home improvement center. One of his responsibilities is to mix custom colors for customers. A woman requests four gallons of “periwinkle blue”. Peter mixes each gallon and loads the four cans to her shopping cart. An hour later the woman returns in a tirade because the cans tipped over in the back seat of her car when she took a corner and one of the lids came off splattering her back seat in paint. Peter’s supervisor explains the store is not responsible for the spill since they did not load the cans. The woman makes a big scene and threatens to “sue” the store. This is a critical customer incident.

Critical Incidents are events, both positive and negative, that have a significant impact on the way a business conducts itself. Critical Incidents usually lead to the establishment of new policies and procedures or the redefinition of existing ones. They can be used to identify training needs, to uncover improvement opportunities or to expose areas where a business is at risk.

This article:

– provides a definition for identifying critical customer incidents

– offers tips and techniques for investigating critical customer incidents

– suggests ways critical customer incidents can be used to improve your business

Why is this important?

If a company fails to recognize critical customer incidents it misses the opportunity to leverage the experience to improve the quality of its service.

Extreme experiences can be great teachers. Whether they’re good or bad they stick in our minds and can be the motivation to change behaviour and thinking.

Think of critical customer incidents as events that fall under the negative or positive tails of the bell curve. They are not the typical interactions of everyday business. They are the especially negative or especially positive events that customers remember.

In other words especially good and especially bad customer service experiences which are critical from your (the customers) perspective.

Whether or not those companies were aware of, or acted on these critical events is the point of this article. 

Some possible indicators of critical customer incidents include:

– Service well beyond a customer’s expectation or the typical service of your competitors

– Service well below a customer’s expectation or the typical service of your competitors

– Extraordinary praise and recognition from customers

– Emotional tirades and outbursts by customers

– Lawsuits waged by customers

– Events referred to as best practices or examples of “how-to” when training staff

– Events that precipitate disciplinary action

So you recognize when one happens – how do you learn from it?

Here are some simple pointers on investigating critical incidents and identifying the significant things you can learn.

Investigating a Critical Customer Incident Case study:

Darryl is the manager of a computer development group for a large restaurant franchise. His team develops applications for the company’s Intranet that store managers use to schedule deliveries, maintain staff schedules, submit weekly reports to the corporate office etc. Based on a complaint from a store manager he asked one of his developers to rearrange the screen for the staffing scheduler. The changes are minor and basically cosmetic. However, the developer notices a field called Comp Time. Since the company did away with the policy of awarding “comp time” (time off for extra hours by salaried employees) he figured it was no longer necessary. Darryl agrees and tells him to remove the field. Big mistake. Several managers used the field to track excess hours so they could determine if additional staff was needed and as a “burnout indicator”. Managers called Darryl and his manager demanding they return the field. Eventually they were able to but not after several days of work and a damaged reputation.

Since the managers of the restaurants were customers of Darryl and his team this could be categorized as a Critical Customer Incident. It certainly displayed indicators of a negative CCI; significant detrimental impact on customers and multiple and/or major complaints by customers.

How did it happen? A seemingly minor, innocuous change snowballed into an avalanche of customer complaints. Darryl’s manager wanted him to investigate the problem then recommend a process to ensure him it wouldn’t happen again.

Below are some tips on investigating CCI’s

1.  Determine the specific event that precipitated the customer impact

Ask: What did we do that caused a problem for our customer?

In this example it would be easy to assume the problem was the fact that the Comp Time field was removed from the computer application but really that’s just a symptom. The real underlying problem is that there was no procedure to validate the system change with managers (customers) before it was made.

2.  Examine your current process

Ask: What is the collective understanding of our policies and procedures related to this problem?

Always begin by examining your current policies and procedures. Darryl acknowledged there were no clearly documented guidelines in place. When investigating a negative CCI solicit input from employees on their understanding of your policies and procedures. If there is wide disparity then there is no clear process. If one or two individuals misunderstand your process then you have a training problem.

3. Determine root cause

Ask: Where did our policy or procedure breakdown?

Continuing the above example, the cause was that there no clear process for validating changes with managers. If Darryl wanted to remove the field there should have been a process by which the change could be run by managers (customers) and approved. Darryl also realized there was no training for his staff. It was assumed everyone understood how changes were to be made.

4. Determine follow up

Ask: What could have been done to avoid this problem? or What needs to change to avoid this problem in the future?

Once you’ve pinpointed where your policies and procedures broke down then corrective action should be obvious. If your process is unclear, document the way the process should work. Be sure to include input from your staff. If the process is clear but practiced inconsistently among employees then provide training. In any event be sure training for new employees is updated to include this CCI.

As with any CCI a good manager must examine how he or she may have contributed to the problem. Perhaps the manager was too lax in providing training. Maybe policies and procedures were not clearly or consistently communicated. When a manager openly accepts a portion of the “blame” he or she communicates a powerful message to employees: It’s okay to make a mistake if you own it and take action to correct it.

Summary: Investigating CCI’s

While the above example uses a negative CCI the process for learning from a CCI is the same whether it’s negative or positive. To recap:

Investigating Critical Customer Incidents

Step 1   Determine the specific event that precipitated the customer impact

Positive CCI    What did we do specifically that had such a positive impact on the customer?

Negative CCI    What did we do specifically that had such a negative impact on the customer?

Step 2 Examine your current process

Positive CCI    What is our collective understanding of our current process as it relates to this customer issue?

Negative CCI    What is our collective understanding of our current process as it relates to this customer issue?

Step 3  Determine root cause

Positive CCI Where did our actions differ from our current understanding of the process? What did we do differently?

Negative CCI Where did our actions differ from our current understanding of the process? What did we do differently?

Step 4 Determine Follow up

Positive CCI How can we ensure this successful process becomes part of our regular process?

Negative CCI How can we ensure this problem is avoided in the future?

So you’ve documented a critical incident and you’ve extracted that valuable nugget of information it was hiding. Now how do you use the information? The next section tells you how.

Learning From Critical Customer Incidents

The concept is fairly obvious. You learn from your mistakes and your successes. Where companies miss the mark is in leveraging a CCI to improve their business. Here’s how to use them:

Interviewing

When interviewing a potential employee describe a negative CCI that occurred at your business. Ask them, “How would you have handled this situation?” or “How do you think this situation could have been handled better?”. This will give you some insight into their understanding of the job and their sensitivity to customer service.

Orientation

Negative and positive CCI’s are extremely useful in training new employees. Simply telling a new employee, “Customer service is critical.” Is not good enough. Give them specific examples of what good and bad service looks like.

Performance Evaluations

If an employee is involved in a positive CCI certainly recognize the accomplishment in his performance evaluation. If he is involved in a negative CCI, determine his portion of responsibility and use it as a learning opportunity. Avoid basing an employee’s performance evaluation entirely on just CCI’s. Overall performance and performance trends are more critical when evaluating employee performance.

Quality Improvement

Good or bad, CCI’s can be used to instigate improvement in your business.

Establishing “Best Practices”

If something works then by all means proliferate it all over your business wherever possible.

In Summary

Critical Customer Incidents are important opportunities no company can afford to miss.

Learn what is important to your customers and shape your business to show them that you value their business.