Zappos does this and their customer service is some of the best in the business:
"Each new employee goes through a rigorous month-long training that focuses on nothing but customer service. They spend 40 hours on the phones helping our customers because regardless of the specific department they were hired for, customer service is the priority. Each holiday season when call volume goes up, everyone in the company pitches in and jumps on the phones because we want to maintain the same level of service no matter how busy it gets."
Zappos seems to stress a rock star image of it's executives and that it has a "family atmosphere". Meanwhile they pay low wages to their customer service and warehouse employees. It's really hard to believe they truly care while paying employees barely enough to stay afloat.
This is pretty typical of all call centers. Most employees bond together to create a "work family", while they while away the hours until they find something better.
The cynic in me says
(i) having "everyone, even the CEO" help out with customer support is a good motivational device to emphasise in what might in every other respect be a substandard customer support working environment
(ii) paying regular customer support staff at the low end of market rates is one way of recovering the imputed financial loss of having your $100/hour senior engineers and top bizdev staff focusing a part of their working year on basic customer support queries...
In my experience People don't dislike helping others, people dislike getting yelled at. No matter how good Zappos is, their CSRs will get yelled at, and I think everyone has a right to not enjoy getting yelled at, I sure don't enjoy it.
So instead of temporary staff, they take people off of their current projects to work in customer service?? This doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Especially since I've been in positions where I have been on tight deadlines. The most likely outcome in this scenario is that the employee will not only have to get their customer service rotations done, but also get their tight-deadline project done. With me, it's difficult to move from customer service right back to software development/engineering.
> So instead of temporary staff, they take people off of their current projects to work in customer service?? This doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Why not? It improves solidarity. Actually when I worked at Microsoft doing tech support, I got pulled off the phones to help with sudden mandatory tech support rotations due to virus outbreaks. It was great to see marketing managers have to help people assess whether their systems were infected and apply appropriate tools. I would take escallations but generally people did a good job. (Oh and these people showed up with very little training on customer service or tech support so that was fun).
But I think one thing that Microsoft got out of it (this was in 2002-2003) was a stronger sense by everyone why it was important to focus more on system security. I think this improved the company and lead to better software.
> Especially since I've been in positions where I have been on tight deadlines.
If management know of the rotation, they will have to adjust the deadlines. How many deadlines are really necessary beyond a simple measurement rationale? Management can usually adjust as needed, or reschedule the rotation to a better point.
> With me, it's difficult to move from customer service right back to software development/engineering.
Isn't the point though to ensure that people are engineering and developing software with customer service in mind?
"I got pulled off the phones to help with sudden mandatory tech support rotations due to virus outbreaks."
It doesn't sound like you are in any kind of engineering role. When you are on the phones, you don't have one large project to work on with deadlines and due dates. It's easy for you to be shifted over to another position.
"If management know of the rotation, they will have to adjust the deadlines. How many deadlines are really necessary beyond a simple measurement rationale? Management can usually adjust as needed, or reschedule the rotation to a better point."
This sounds like a nightmare to deal with. In addition to tight deadlines as a manager, I now have to deal with customer service rotations?? It's hard enough to get projects completed with upper management changing scope (which has happened at pretty much any place I've worked over the last 15 years).
"Isn't the point though to ensure that people are engineering and developing software with customer service in mind?"
I'm fine with this as long as management realizes that deadlines will need to change and it might take a couple of days (or even a week) to get back into the flow of a project that an engineer/developer has been taken off for customer support. In my experience, management doesn't know or care about either of these things and thinks you can just move people around when needed.
I'm glad I run my own company now, so I don't have to deal with this bullshit any longer. I would never implement something like this.
I think the better way to put it is: it improves empathy.
More often than not, in large teams or organisations there is often a culture of blame or lack of accountability. I believe these exercises do help to foster greater teamwork and a sense of ownership (of the business).
I would assume from the fact that you run your own business, surely in the early stages you would have to take on multiple roles / responsibilities?
If management is going to be realistic, they can't leave deadlines unadjusted and still expect rotations through other departments.
But if you want a good business, you need to cross-train, which means this sort of rotation. That's something Toyota learned, something Etsy has learned, and something Microsoft inadvertantly reinvented if by accident.
Customer service & tech support departments often suffer from broken communication and lack of resources. I'd rather resources be devoted to improving communication and documentation between customer service and other departments. It's kind of a novelty to have people who shouldn't be on the phones or who don't want to be on the phones taking customer calls. Perhaps you'll get lip service that things will change, but those promises fade as quickly they are off the phones.
Customer service is often seen as a burden/cost, and the employees expendable. Unless the company thinks differently, then you'll have issues.
That makes the assumption that zappos has tight-deadline projects that take priority over taking care of their customers. If they're truly a customer comes first type company, they'll make room to take care of the CSR.
I think sales may be more important. Getting an appreciation for how hard it is to get a customer would alter how a lot of engineers think about features. Customer service is honestly easy in comparison.
Agreed, but one huge problem here is that getting a customer often requires more than a checklist of features, but rather a product that solves a customer's problem well.
I agree that sales, support, and engineering should all have rotations. The sales and support give you very different insights into what customers need which help you out with your engineering.
At the first software job I had (94-97), every engineer was expected to do customer support on rotation. Typically it amounted to one day a fortnight. I found it to be hugely helpful, in particular the software we were building (Desktop GIS) wasn't something that I was going to use myself, so understanding what the users got hung up on was really helpful. We could also be pretty responsive, it wasn't unusual to just fix a bug either while on the phone to someone, or within an hour or so of getting off the phone, and then we could just dump in on our BBS and tell them to dial-up and download it...
Everyone in the company does these as well (our CEO Chad answered did his holiday rotation a couple weeks ago), typically during the holiday season when we slow down our deploys and our support volume increases. But we're encouraged as engineers to do them once a quarter.
I don't know if it's more important, but I agree with the sentiment that customer service rotations are extremely important. Nothing brings your brilliant head-in-the-clouds engineering ego crashing down to earth like reading an email from a frustrated user who can't figure out how to get (what you thought was) your brilliant product working right.
I agree. Understanding the customer is a key principle of good business. To paraphrase Ducker, you're selling satisfaction to the customer, and if you're building it, you should know what makes for a happy customer.
If you truly feel that way, then I honestly am curious as to why you get up in the morning. Dogfooding, and listening to customer problems and feedback are two of the best ways of making your product better for everyone. A few hours on the phone, or responding to emails is fantastic for breaking up preconceived notions as to what people are doing with your project, and can give new ideas.
A superficially boring issue like someone who doesn't know how to fucking google it could be a much more interesting problem. Is your program laid out well? Is there some hitch in the workflow that you're not noticing because you've gotten accustomed to some misfeature? Are they trying to do something with the software that you didn't intend, but could make good money at by offering as a companion product, or other upgrade? These are things that support can teach you, because you're actively engaging with someone who has a problem.
I love to solve interesting problems as much as any hacker, but software businesses are about helping people and when people are having trouble using their computer then that is part of the job. I think it's worth to spend 1% of your work time on customer support to gain an understanding of that on a deep, visceral level.
"Each new employee goes through a rigorous month-long training that focuses on nothing but customer service. They spend 40 hours on the phones helping our customers because regardless of the specific department they were hired for, customer service is the priority. Each holiday season when call volume goes up, everyone in the company pitches in and jumps on the phones because we want to maintain the same level of service no matter how busy it gets."
http://www.zapposinsights.com/blog/item/zappos-insights-anno...