Jim Dunlap is the president of Cycle30, a provider of order-to-cash billing services for cable, utility and telecommunications operators, and has spent many years as an executive with Nordstrom, a clothing retailer famous for their excellent customer service. According to Dunlap, Nordstrom could teach people in the hosted billing a great deal about customer service.
For the annual Cycle30 all-hands company meeting, Dunlap invited Robert Spector, author of The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook for Becoming the “Nordstrom” of Your Industry, to discuss how Nordstrom’s principles for excellence in customer service could apply to Cycle30.
Spector pointed out three main lessons that would allow companies like Cycle30 to raise their customer service standards. Companies should start, he says, by telling their story. As Spector says, every company has a story.
“We’re in business because we knew we could offer a better platform for order-to-cash billing for mid-tier wireless, cable and utility operators,” wrote Isaac Szymanczyk in the Cycle30 blog.
“Most companies just tell you about their products. We know that people don’t buy from companies: they buy from people. We get what makes billing difficult and what it takes to do it right.”
Another lesson, according to Spector, is to hire people who have the right fit for the company’s culture. Almost anyone can have valuable experience at a job, but if they lack the right attitude and the right people skills, then they won’t contribute to a positive service culture. According to Spector, Nordstrom has a saying: Hire the smile, train the skills.
Finally, Spector says that everyone in the company has to act as though they are in the customer service department. When times are challenging for the company, everyone has to be ready to pitch in their effort, experience and excellence to solve problems. When times are great, then everyone deserves to celebrate.
Nordstrom has some unusual practices that reinforce its customer service culture. All Nordstrom employees start on the sales floor. Additionally, Nordstrom never hires management externally. As a result, employees act more like entrepreneurial shopkeepers than like employees who are just there to earn a paycheck. These practices have made the name Nordstrom synonymous with customer service.
What makes Cycle30’s hosted billing service special, according to Dunlap, is its foundation. “We had seen one too many wireless and cable billing/BSS vendors deliver less-than-stellar service to us and our peers in the industry. We knew we could do better.”
This week, Cycle30 is at the Connected World Conference exhibiting with partner Arrow Electronics (News - Alert) and talking about rating and billing for machine-to-machine services.
Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli