Messin with Sasquatch

Hat tip to Jackie.

Why don't companies like answering the phone?

This article describes some of the clever, confounding ways that tech companies make it increasingly difficult to reach them by phone. 

While those of us who have to use a phone to do work will suffer a migraine just browsing this article I think the folks who run most big time phone service departments feel the exact opposite. I bet they're almost jealous of techies' refusal to talk to their customers. They probably wish they could do the same. After all, while phone service departments are ostensibly in the business of taking care of people, everything in how they're run—from hiding phone numbers on websites to automated answers to making it impossible to reach a human being—makes me think they don't see any business value in it. To them the tech industry is essentially at the avant garde of their silent dream: to be virtually unavailable.

To be fair, they want to be unavailable when you have a problem. If you're placing an order that's a different story. They'll answer the phone—after you wait. Nearly every company with a call center puts you in a queue to wait before they answer. I never knew why. Until I had a call center.

When I started Zingerman's Mail Order we had two ten dollar phones and an answering machine. When the phone rang we answered it. We kept the second line free so if we were busy the call would "hunt" to the second line and go to voice mail—I mean the answering machine. Voice mail came later.

We knew we weren't doing right by our customers. They couldn't wait on hold for us to answer. If we were on the other line or out getting a coffee they had to leave a message. Then they had to wait till we called them back. When we could finally afford it we "upgraded," as they say. We got a phone system. It could allow people to wait. Unfortunately, you had to wait whether you wanted to or not.

With the new system, when the phone rang my recorded message answered it. Even if there were three people twiddling their thumbs waiting to answer phones the recording answered first. If you knew your way through the maze you could press 2 to bypass the message and get your call answered. But most people didn't. They waited. At a minimum they waited 25 seconds through my welcome message and the list of options before the system let the phone ring to reach a human.

After we bought this "upgrade" we asked if there was some way to bypass the queue. We asked, "Can't we just have our crew answer the phone if they're free and only use the queue when we're all busy?" The first answer we got was, "No one does that." After being persistent the answer we got was, "No, you can't." There are often questions you wish you asked before you signed a check.

Phone systems are usually sold under contract. As soon as ours was up we went looking for a replacement. We got it about a year ago. We asked the same question. "Can't we just have people answer the phone if they're free and only use the queue when we're all busy?"The first answer we got was, "No one does that." But to their credit they did their homework and came back and said, "Yes, you can." So we bought it.

We started the process of figuring how to get rid of the queue in March. It took five months. We launched last week. Now when the phone rings we answer it. Most of the time. If everyone is on the phone the call goes to the queue. Sometime during the first day I check how often that happened. We had eighteen calls at that point. Two went to the queue. Nearly 90% were answered on the first ring. Now, it's worth noting we get a couple of hundred thousand phone calls a year. If we can keep that percentage up it means, in the next twelve months, at 25 seconds a pop, we'll collectively save the human race fourteen hundred hours of waiting. 

Here's to small steps backwards.

Big hat tip goes to Jackie and Joe and everyone else who helped make this happen.

Business Plaid

ZMO Alumni: Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson probably hates that I used this as his picture.

The holiday rush is here, like it is every year. It always brings a surge of amazing, unexpected people to our business. I’ve met some of you this year and it’s no different—what a cool bunch of folks you are. There have been so many fabulous people come work for us during the holiday it’s hard to even comprehend. Many have stayed. Jackie and Brad, for example. They were some of our first holiday staff. I remember that I was late to Jackie’s interview. I remember that because she never lets me forget it. Brad — I never remember interviewing. It’s like Brad was always here.

I thought I would share a little ZMO history with at least one alumni profile this holiday. It may seem a little personal for the biz blog but I think it shares a sense of the spirit we’ve always had. Plus it’s a peek back in history at a company that, not long ago, was much more tiny and fragile than it is now. 

ZMO ALUMNI PROFILE

Robert Johnson

on the phones circa 1995-6

When I hired Robert everyone called him Bob. It was 1995. It was near Christmas. In the dark basement of my brain I knew that I needed help to run Mail Order for the holiday. At that time we were a staff of two. We would need two or three more—at least! It wasn’t until late November that the light turned on and I realized I needed to post, interview, hire, train...you know, that kind of stuff. Frankly I’ve never been a terrific planner.

I called Bob because I knew him as a friend of a friend. More importantly, I knew he’d worked in phone sales. Being an, ahem, business man, I calculated his experience would help cut my training expenses (which were also unplanned for). His experience came from a previous company, name unknown. To call it phone sales might have been a stretch. Bob’s employer wasn’t exactly a legitimate organization. Telemarketing of some sort, positioned as "donations." It was basically one of those companies that the national Do Not Call registry was created for. I remember a line he used to give  little old ladies who asked him if he worked for the fire department: “Well, I’m sure not a policeman!” I knew Bob was recently unemployed. He had told me recently that he was walking to work in Ypsilanti, coffee in hand, saw a newspaper with a headline announcing a police raid on his employer, turned around and headed home.

Bob worked two holidays at ZMO. In between he sold cheese at the deli with Debra Dickerson. At the holiday, equipment-wise, we were pathetic. We had two ten dollar touch tone phones from K Mart. Our voice mail system consisted of three fifteen dollar answering machines from someplace worse. No 1-800 number. The fax was at Zingerman’s deli, across the street, and it was always running out of paper. We’d forget it was there for a day or two.

All I remember from those two seasons was my phone plastered to my ear all day, non-stop. Never a break, almost nothing to eat. Bob and I were the entire sales office. When we caught our breath and were off the phone at the same time we'd be in a daze and couldn’t think straight. Our conversation was childlike and profane, like a dirty Dr Seuss book. “Mo, Did you get the fax from Fox?” “No, but I just got the shit from Mr Schatz!”

When we closed at 5pm we hit play on the boom box, took a 10 minute break, then rang back all the voice mails. By 7 or 8 it was all over. Oh, except for the pick sheets. We wrote those by hand and it took half the night. 

Like many of the folks working in the service center now Bob had a fan club. He has a deeper voice than I do and I think there were people who called just to listen. Before he left he gave me advice about working the phones that I’ve never forgotten, but, for obvious reasons, hasn’t made it into our training manual. “Mo, the secret to great service is just talk to everyone like you want to have sex with them. Woman or man, doesn’t matter. Everyone.”

In 1997, Bob moved to New York. He worked at Murray’s Cheese in the Village and walked quarter wheels of Parmigiano around the corner to a young chef named Mario Batali, who was really starting to make it at a restaurant named Pó. After that he worked in one of those atrociously-named internet start-ups circa 2000. His stock shares went in the shitter, like everyone else’s.

Soon afterwards Bob got into the music business and he’s stayed there ever since. For years he worked at The Knitting Factory, a great little 3-stage club in lower Manhattan. At this point I should probably say I love rock and roll and everything about it so it has been awesome to stay in touch with Bob and, once in a while, get a chance to sneak into some great sold-out shows.

For the last three years Bob has worked with a partner in his own company called Scenic. He books rock shows for clubs in New York, mainly in Brooklyn. Some cute tiny shows like the Trachtenberg Family Slide Show Players. Some old punk bands like Fear. Some unknown heavy metal bands with moody names like Unearthly Trance. Some up and coming stars like Kurt Vile. And once in a while, some bonafide stars like Andrew W.K. and Big Star. (Andrew W.K. is from Ann Arbor and played a recent Scenic show in a Fleetwood Diner shirt.)

Whenever I see Bob, I try to remember to bring him a brownie. He still says Zingerman’s was the best job he ever had. (I barely believe him, but it was fun.) Now he is his own boss, which is something I hope everyone gets to try one day. If nothing else, for meeting awesome people like him.