Implementing “Extreme” Customer Service

Becoming a customer-focused organization is a gradual and arduous process, but one that may be well worth the effort in terms of driving growth through capturing repeat business and attracting new clientele. Simply enhancing existing customer-service programs can help improve and retain critical business relationships, but to build a solid niche, investing in “extreme” customer service measures may be necessary.

Extreme customer service extends beyond a company’s help center and customer-service representatives. It permeates an entire organization, placing a customer’s needs at the center of each decision from product and service deployment to delivery and beyond.

Extreme customer service changes the way employees think about their jobs and how they approach challenges and tasks. It requires a commitment from senior-level managers to invest time, energy, and training in the right people.

Introducing extreme customer service means implementing a major shift in a company’s culture. And such a dramatic shift cannot be expected to take root overnight. Rather, it is necessary to take measured steps to integrate new programs and methods to bring gradual acceptance and, more importantly, regular practice into being.

Growing in a Flat-Trending Industry

In North America, sales growth in the PCB industry has been flat at best in recent years. With increased competition from overseas companies offering deep discounts on large production runs, many domestic operations have closed up shop completely. Some companies, however, have bucked the trend, carving out profitable niches in an increasingly challenging industry.

At Sunstone Circuits, the adoption of a customer-centric philosophy at every level of the organization five years ago has produced compelling results:
• Exceptionally high retention rates.
• Many new customers.
• Positive word-of-mouth.
• Average year-over-year sales growth of 20%.

With a focus on the quick-turn prototyping end of the business, Sunstone has achieved a strong following through building collaborative relationships, developing valuable tools, and offering extreme service—all with one entity in mind: the customer.

Identifying and Training the Right Employees

To offer extreme customer service, companies must consider their customers’ needs in every aspect of product or service delivery so even engineers and designers are putting themselves in a client’s shoes to determine how to better construct a system or tool that will add value. Adopting such a holistic approach requires putting the right people in place because they will be your greatest asset in embracing and practicing extreme service.

Given the current state of the economy, employers seeking to fill a position have a larger number of more qualified candidates to choose from than in recent years. Whether selecting talent from a large or a small pool, it is important to consider which qualities candidates can contribute to an extreme customer-service orientation. While some skills can be learned quickly on the job, certain qualities never can be acquired through training, such as the passion and desire to be an advocate for your customer.

Once the right people are in place, a solid training program that provides employees with a deep understanding of a product’s or service’s capabilities must be implemented. While it is impressive to have a service representative on call at any hour, day or night, that feature will be of little use if the representative can’t answer critical questions from a designer burning the midnight oil to meet a strict deadline. Customer-facing employees should have an intricate understanding not only of mundane order-processing details, but also of the various tools that customers will be using to create their products.

Instilling a sense of accountability in each employee also is critical. At Sunstone, it is understood that customer satisfaction is a key deliverable, and employees are empowered to make decisions to support customer needs and think creatively to contribute to improving processes, systems, and tools.

Assessing Performance

With a top-notch team assembled, it is time to institute some measurements and benchmarks to determine performance levels. And the best sources for feedback? Your customers.

At Sunstone, a report card of sorts has been implemented for each order. With a survey form integrated into the ordering process, each customer has an opportunity to provide valuable insight to their experience with the ordering process and with supporting tools and software intended to ease the transaction. The goal is to achieve 100% customer satisfaction.

In the event an experience is not up to par, we want to know why so any glitches in our system can be addressed. In addition to reviewing customer surveys, we pay attention to all of the feedback areas on our website. It also may be beneficial to spend some time perusing industry blogs to see what other designers and engineers are saying about the tools they’re using and the service they’re receiving. Even if a conversation isn’t about your company in particular, it could spur some creative, proactive ideas for improving the customer experience before issues crop up.

Finally, keep track of what your competitors are doing. Identify a handful of key competitors and make a practice of reviewing their websites and their customer-service offerings on a regular basis. Not only does this practice provide an opportunity to knowledgably tout your company’s advantages to potential clients, but it also enables your organization to respond to new industry norms as well as exceed customer expectations established elsewhere.

Best-in-Class Customer Relations Practices

One of the most appreciated customer-relations practices is availability. In the quick-turn prototyping PCB industry, our customers are working evenings and weekends to meet their tight schedules, and some issues can’t wait until Monday morning to be resolved. Because our clients need it, we provide service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. How many companies do you know answer the phone on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day with a live and helpful person?

Depending on your organization’s particular customer base, extreme service hours may not be necessary. However, you may find that extending support hours by an hour or two in each direction can make a world of difference to designers putting in a few extra hours on a project.

Providing customers with opportunities to resolve issues in a timely manner can allow them to stay on track and keep their process moving. Again, survey your customers to see if such an additional investment would be worthwhile.

All Customers Created Equal

To create a customer-focused organization, there must be a concerted effort to provide consistent treatment to all customers, regardless of project or size. In a truly customer-centric organization, handling the orders in the same manner will ensure that each one receives the utmost attention. By valuing each job and providing the necessary tools and support for customers to move through the ordering process seamlessly, an organization can win loyalty at all levels, improve word-of-mouth, and garner repeat business.

Beyond the Call Center

At Sunstone, extreme customer service that began with a goal to provide an intuitive quotation and ordering process supported by 24/7/365, high quality, personalized customer service has evolved into a new way of doing business. Extreme service now is integrated in the company culture with all departments and levels of employees approaching their jobs with a focus on how to improve the overall customer experience. This attitude has resulted in creating a total solution for PCB designers and their requirements.

While the PCB may be the ultimate product shipped to customers, Sunstone has taken a proactive role in ensuring an accurate and manufacturable design the first time around. With a commitment to moving information upstream in the process, the company has introduced environments in which customers can design boards, confirm parts availability and cost, and check the manufacturability of a board at any step, saving on design turns and, consequently, saving time and money to achieve customer success.

Working collaboratively and forging partnerships within the PCB industry have been critical to efforts to bring more useful information to designers, thereby providing greater customer support. With an eye toward ensuring a design team’s success and satisfaction with a job, Sunstone has developed various strategic partnerships: with design service firms to ensure that schematics filed with manufacturing facilities deliver high-yield orders, with tool designers such as Altium Designer and CadSoft EAGLE to create add-on software for design rule check, and with assembly firms for an easy transition to production.

This extreme and holistic approach to servicing customer needs has been one in the making for several years. Furthermore, it is well understood that such an extreme approach will continue to evolve as technologies change and consumer demands shift.

Embrace the Extreme

Since Sunstone Circuits began instituting its extreme customer-service philosophy, the company has experienced phenomenal growth of approximately 4,000 brand new customers annually, an extremely high retention rate, and an average year-over-year sales growth of 20% during the past five years.

Building an extreme and comprehensive customer-service solution requires a significant investment of time and resources, but don’t dismiss extreme ideas out of hand. By taking gradual steps to enhance existing customer-service programs and change a cultural mindset, organizations can make great strides in improving customer relations and, ultimately, sales performance.

About the Author

Terry Heilman is president and CEO of Sunstone Circuits. In more than 15 years at Sunstone, he has led the company through growth from traditional PCB manufacturing to online PCBs. In addition to his leadership at Sunstone, Mr. Heilman has held top management positions at a number of companies in the high-tech and manufacturing industries. He also serves on the boards of directors for several companies. Sunstone Circuits, 13626 S. Freeman Rd., Mulino, OR 97042, 503-829-9109, e-mail: [email protected]

November 2009

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