Catering to Special Customers
Marketing Internet services to particular communities can boost your bottom line, but to be successful, this kind of campaign must be handled with finesse.
by Kevin Beauchamp [September 14, 1999]
Not long ago, I received an e-mail from an ISP asking my opinion on how they should approach "localizing" their services. Ironically, it is something we've been working on recently. This is a marketing approach that can do more than just add local flavor: It can instill tremendous customer loyalty.
Localizing is when a company molds itself to fit into a specific community of customers. In many cases, this involves translating their website into another language. But to localize effectively, a company must communicate with the targeted community in ways that go beyond just presenting their company website in a particular language.
Localizing can be expensive?which is why many ISP have a difficult time making the effort?but like everything else to do with marketing, it need not be. There may well be an ethnic or socially focused Chamber of Commerce in your area that would be more than willing to help you out in reaching the Chamber's focus community.
Extend your family
You should definitely consider hiring an ethnic consultant or employee capable of reading and writing in the local language and assisting you in designing or collecting content that will appeal to the community you're addressing. This should be someone who can do more than simply speak and read the appropriate language, though: Make sure he or she can really communicate well in this language. A "localized" company brochure or website that looks as if it was written by a five-year-old just learning the language will not be an effective marketing tool.
Furthermore, language is only the beginning. Your consultant or employee should also be steeped in the culture you're attempting to localize to. He or she should be knowledgeable about the community's ethnic or cultural interests and the programs, content, and marketing that should most appeal to community members. You don't want to promote your ISP with a barbecue rib picnic when your target audience is vegetarians. While this example is rather glaring, understanding and reflecting the subtle cultural nuances of specific groups will definitely help your cause.
Include, don't exclude
Keep in mind also that while niche marketing programs?including localizing your company's services?can be effective, they can also backfire. In going the localizing route, you must be careful not to alienate the rest of your potential market. Customers come from all walks of life; maintaining a site that panders to one specific group to the exclusion of all others can keep you from really growing. Mass-media advertising a site at yourcompany.com to everyone in your market is great, but if the site is available exclusively in Spanish, you've wasted those dollars on a majority of English-speaking potential customers.
Furthermore, many social, religious, and ethnic groups have big problems with other social, religious, and ethnic groups. Walking the fine line of balance (avoiding offending anyone) is important if you want to create a service that everyone enjoys using. Try not to limit the customers you can obtain by focusing so strongly on one market that it alienates any or all of the others.
Creating alliances with niche groups can be a very compelling marketing strategy and one that can reduce churn and spread the word about your company quickly. Doing it right means bringing in the right people who can really create the right cultural nuances that attract your target market; but at the same time, do not alienate other potential customers.
Keeping Customers: Part 1 -
Quality of Service
Every customer you retain is a customer you don' t have to replace. More important, happy customers send you new customers. Service is key.
by Jason Zigmont HowToSell.net [September 10, 1999]
Corny as it may sound, as an ISP, your middle name is 'service.' Good service is critical to retaining customers?which, in turn, is critical to attracting new ones. It's a fact: Most ISPs report that the largest number of new users comes from referrals?and only happy customers will refer new ones to you.
The term 'Quality of Service' (QoS), has undergone an evolution?from a descriptive phrase, to a quantifiable attribute of what you, as an ISP, sell to your customers. QoS is usually expressed in a percentage of uptime, such as 99.9 percent, or as 'how many 9s'. Many business customers are now looking for Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that commit you to a specified QoS level?and often mandate a monetary refund for your failing to meet that committment. Do you know what your QoS level is?
Even if your customers don't demand one, you should make a SLA with yourself. That is, commit yourself to providing a certain level of service. It should cover uptime, busy signals, throughput, and many other technical issues.
Keep yourself honest
The hardest part of providing technically superior service is in measuring it? a prerequisite to figuring out what needs to be changed.
Do you know how many busy signals you have?
What is your user-to-modem ratio?
Do you know how many dropped calls you have during busy times?
Do you know what your uptime is?
Do you know what your Internet access capacity usage is?
Once you develop answers to these questions, then you can use them to improve your service. In turn, the improvements become central to your marketing. If you can prove your QoS commitment to yourself, it shouldn't be hard to convince customers to use your service.
To outsource or not . . .
Customer service?both technical and on the billing side?is an area that is often overlooked. Many ISPs these days are turning to outsourced technical support?mostly for the wrong reason: cost. IMHO, customer service is an area where cost should never be a determining factor. A dollar saved on customer service can cost you hundreds in the end. Remember: The average disgruntled customer tells 10 people about it, while the satisfied one tells only four.
If you are considering outsourcing, keep in mind that in doing so you will relinquish something approaching 50 percent control over the quality of your customers' experience. Customers will now have two points of contact, in separate locations and with different organizations. You'll need to make sure that your outsourcing provider represents your company in a way that reflects favorably on you. Check up. Call your outsourcing provider posing as a user. Do it a number of times, at different times of day; see how they handle you. Think about it from a customer's standpoint. Do you want the person answering the telephone to represent your company?
Speed matters
If you keep customer service in house (as I'd urge you to do), keep an eye on average call times and?more importantly?hold times. Users seem to deal pretty well with hold times in the 5 minute range, but as hold times stretch to 10 minutes, they become increasingly upset. Average technical support calls are around 7 minutes. I'd recommend making pretty darned sure you don't exceed this.
One customer-service aid well worth implementring is a call tracking system. First of all, compiling a permanent history of all interactions you've had with each customer helps your staff personalize service. Second, keeping comprehensive records of problems that come up helps you proactively improve your operations, resulting in happier customers overall. And?to say it one last time?happy customers refer new customers to you . . . and you profit.
Keeping Customers: Part 2 -
Relationship Building
A low-key non-relationship with customers may be okay if you're a monopoly like the local telco or power company?but not if you're an ISP.
by Jason Zigmont HowToSell.net [September 17, 1999]
As an ISP, you have to deal with churn. Churn is the number of users that terminate service with you on a monthly basis. Most ISPs admit to a churn rate of 2 to 3 percent per month?or between 25 and 33 percent per year! If your churn rate is typical, then, you've got to bring in more than 2 percent of new business every month just to stay in the same place! To actually grow your business, you need to do significantly more!
In last week's column, Quality of Service, we discussed improving your overall service as a strategy for keeping customers, but today we'll take a look at ways to lower your churn rate by cultivating an active relationship with subscribers.
Special content
One key to lowering your churn is to offer services or content that your users can only get from your ISPs. Many ISPs have taken the first step in this, which is to localize their home page. A number of services, such as Planet Direct, Snap!, and LookSmart make this fairly simple by providing cookie-cutter local content that ISPs can use.
Tip: Never look on the content as a moneymaker. You may, in fact, manage to work out an add split with the provider, but this is not the point. The content is there as a service to users; any extra revenue it provides is a bonus.
Great as localized content is, I never recommend putting it on your index page. Local content has a way of taking over the page, and new users coming there to sign up often have to spend considerable time hunting around amid the local content before finding your subscription form . (While I always recommend against this, it is possible to do it right. Telco and ISP SNET is one company that managed it nicely.)
A better idea is a 'Members Only' section. This can house local content, plus many other things that users will find useful. Members Only sections can and should include items such as; a member's forum, specials or coupons, a user web ring, a system update page, and any other information you feel you can give to your users. I've seen ISPs post employee bios, employee of the month features, pictures, and many other little items that give the ISP a personal feel. Subscribers love it!
Communicate regularly
Another way to maintain a relationahip with subscribers?one that's met with a high level of success?is to publish a newsletter, either via e-mail or via postal mail. E-mail is of course cheaper, but you can easily put a print newsletter in with your invoices and have a much better impact with your users. A number of companies, of which Incogneto is one, can make this even easier by providing semi-customized content.
When all is said and done, the bottom line is to be creative. For example, one time I organized a customer-appreciation party. It was held at a local Cyber Caf?hich was one of our customers. The local radio station (another of our customers) sent some folks over. The customers absolutely loved it!
The 14 Deadly Sins of MindSpring ? or Ways that We Can Be Just Like Everybody Else
by Jason Zigmont HowToSell.net [January 21, 2000]
(Note; The core of this column is reprinted here with permission. Special thanks go to Lance Weatherby, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. -JZ)
In the world of ISP marketing, I have yet to find a company that is a better example than MindSpring. From the beginning, MindSpring always kept an eye on the details, and has done just about everything right. While AOL may have more users, MindSpring's users are much more loyal, are acquired at a lowercost, and are happier overall.
Nearly a year ago, Charles Brewer, CEO of MindSpring, articulated the 14 deadly sins, and Lance was nice enough to reprint the entire list on the ISP-Marketing discussion community.
These are essential rules that all ISPs should live by. I have posted them herem (along with my comments in small type) for you to consider.
Give lousy service?busy signals, disconnects, downtime, and ring-no-answers.
The easiest way to loose dial-up customers is by breaking #1. Do you track your usage? Do you know if your CLEC/LEC is truly providing P.01 level of service? - JZ
Rely on outside vendors who let us down.
Make internal procedures easy on us, even if it means negatively affecting or inconveniencing the customer.
Remember the saying "The customer always comes first"? The saying has been around for ages, and by making something easy on yourself, and putting yourself first, will cause you to end up in last place. - JZ
Joke about how dumb the customers are.
Every time you call a user a luser, idiot, or the like, you show your disregard for the customer. While joking around after hours may seem like fun, it will influence the way you see customers, and therefore the way you treat them. - JZ
Finger point at how other departments are not doing their job.
My mother always said "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". If you have constructive criticism, or some way to help another department, then express it. If you're looking to pass the buck, or boost your ego by putting another department down, then grow up, and keep it to yourself. - JZ
Customers can't get immediate "live" help from sales or support.
Service is king. Customers will stay on hold for only so long before they'll leave. One thing that amazes me about some ISPs is that there is no hold time for sales, as new sales are important, but a hold queue for tech support. It's much easier to keep customers then to find new ones. - JZ
Poor coordination across departments.
Is there a way for sales to talk to tech or vice versa? How about billing and sales? Management and the rest of the world? The Dilbert effect has killed many companies. Don't let it kill yours. - JZ
Show up at a demo, sales call, trade show, or meeting unprepared.
Preparation is the key to a successful demo, sales call, etc.. If you go into a meeting unprepared, you will waste everyone's time and loose the respect of the people you are meeting with. - JZ
Ignore the competition, they are far inferior to us.
Unless you know your competition's strengths and weaknesses, you will never know how to beat them. Just as important is to know whom your competition truly is. Is your competition AOL or the mom and pop across the street? - JZ
Miss deadlines that we commit to internally and externally.
Never cut yourself short on time. Both internally and externally, it is better to set a realistic deadline and make it, then to have to ask for extra time as the deadline comes near. Remember that other people's deadlines may rest on you making yours. - JZ
Make recruiting, hiring, and training a lower priority because we are too busy doing other tasks.
Finding, and keeping, trained, qualified people, is the hardest task any company has. The Internet market compounds this problem, as the number of qualified people is limited, and the good ones all have jobs already. - JZ
Look for the next job assignment, instead of focusing on the current one.
If it is worth doing, its worth doing well. When you don't focus on the job at hand, you short both yourself and your company. - JZ
Indulge in office gossip, rumors, and politics.
More time has been lost in gossip, rumors and politics then any other place in a corporate environment. For example, in a sales environment, there are always the winners and the losers. Finding the losers is very easy. Walk by the water cooler. The ones standing around talking to each other are 9 times out of 10, the losers. - JZ
Rely on dissatisfied customers to be your service monitors.
If you wait for your customers to leave to find out why they left, then you are throwing money out the door. Customer surveys are easily done, and can save you customers that you may have otherwise lost. - JZ
Spit Happens
Things go wrong; there's nothing you can do to stop that. What makes the difference is how you handle it.
by Jason Zigmont HowToSell.net [December 3, 1999]
As I walked through the streets of my hometown recently, I saw a baby with a bib that boldly proclaimed 'Spit Happens.'
Corny, I know, but the phrase it's playing off comes up all too frequently around many ISP shops. Most of us have Murphy on our payroll whether we want him or not.
The ISP industry?and its 'cutting edge' technology?tends to have good and bad days. We've all had those days when the server goes south at 3 AM, or our favorite telco is attacked by a backhoe, or. . . . However, wthe way you handle the problems that arise makes all the difference in the business consequences.
The best policy
The key is to be honest. When disaster strikes, remember that it's not the end of the world, and even the biggest providers have problems. If you are honest and up front with your customers, you'll most likely discover that they are willing to accomodate a lot of the 'spit' that happens.
Many moons ago when I was first getting my feet wet in this ISP stuff, the ISP I was working at decided to move from our pile of USR Sportsters to a nice Microcomm ISPorte, which had great blinky lights. (They really did. An ISPorte on top of a Xyplex Network 9000, which was black with more blinky lights, looked very impressive.)
We decided it would be no problem to switch modems at 3 PM?a slow time for us?one by one. And so we did. (This happened to be our largest POP?over 750 users calling into it?which in 1996 was sizable in Connecticut.)
Unh-oh!
Things looked good until about 6:00 PM when everyone started to call in and the ISPorte decided to loose its NVRAM settings one by one. The short and sweet of the story is that during our peak time, for 6 hours at our biggest POP, we had zero dial-up connectivity.
I have to say that while I use this ISP to illustrate many of my what-not-to-do stories, the organization showed grace under pressure on this occasion. They placed a message about the outage on our 'hold' music, gave a realistic time-to-repair estimate, and took people's numbers, promising to notify them when the POP was back up. When it did come back up, we called every customer who left a contact number and sent out an explanatory e-mail.
And to our amazement, we didn't loose a single customer.
The moral of the story is that when spit happens, you need to face the music (sorry for the mixed metaphors): Be up front and honest with your customers. Nine times out of ten, they will understand. But people hate being lied to and treated like kids.
We all have bad days. We just need hope they are few and far between?and fix things as fast as possible.
The Subscriber Side #1: Protect Me!
We don't want our ISPs to be law enforcement agencies any more than we want our health care determined by an underwriting clerk. Still, is there a role for service providers in shielding subscribers from unwanted content?
by Nelson King [June 21, 1999]
Spam, porn, hackers, scams, viruses?the growing list of nasties that are evolving with the Internet have a lot of people concerned. I'm one of them. This is worse than software updates. More and more things to watch out for, yet I have so little time and perhaps lack the expertise to do it right. I don't blame people who are looking for help. I'm even understanding about people who want to move some of the responsibility onto other shoulders?like onto the government or the ISP.
Not so long ago, politicians made a great roar discovering the issue of pornography on the Web. A lot of old-time Net users thought this was posturing or much ado about nothing; sex after all is part of life and the Net is life so the Net will have sex. I don't know how many of these inveterate Net trekkers have children but it doesn't seem like they had much of a clue about the sensitivities of parents. "Protect the children" sentiment runs deep and brooks no political opposition whatsoever. The result was that we almost got the CDA.
Under the hot lights of a newly engaged press, Internet users, both rational and irrational, began to cast about for points where children could be effectively protected from exposure to pornography. At the time it seemed only three solutions were viable: general legislation, user control (via blocking software), or force ISPs to become censors. I remember a great panic that swept through the Internet community-and ISPs in particular-about the call for service providers to police Internet content.
In loco parentis?
In a way the ISP might seem like today's schools-a convenient place to dump responsibilities that properly belong with the family or with individual parents. If I'm a busy working parent, and I don't know much about the Internet, but I do know that my kids need to be protected, why wouldn't I look toward some centralized point that could?technically at least?help block unwanted content?
I know. There are many valid arguments as to why ISPs shouldn't be involved with censorship of any kind. The "we are only the conduit" argument, along with the parallels to the legal freedoms of the publishing media have been widely disseminated. On the other hand, the oft-quoted example of someone yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater points up a scenario in which a lay person (the theater owner) is empowered to take quasi-legal action. The ISP position may be analogous. Certain services?such as chat and hosted Web sites?may be illegal and harmful, and the ISP would be expected to take some action.
Mirroring the law
Back in February, for example, MindSpring shut down the anti-abortion Web site of Neal Horsley for violating its 'appropriate use policies'. This was shortly after an Oregon jury ruled the site constituted a threat to abortion providers. Nearly all ISPs have language in their contracts that provide for restrictions on site content and remedies for illegal and unwarranted behavior. Users see this and realize the ISP isn't completely neutral-something more than a conduit, something less than a censor.
I don't want my ISP to be a law enforcement agency any more than I want my medical care to be determined by an underwriting clerk. It's not their job. But I might not mind an ISP offering blocking services?even for a fee. If parents don't have time to keep blocking lists up-to-date (or even install the blocking software in the first place), maybe they would be willing to have an ISP do it. The same might apply to spam, viruses, or other blocking type services where professional expertise might be a real benefit. Why not?
Obviously I'm not speaking for everybody, although in this column I'll strive to represent both Joe Public and Mr. Solid Corporate Customer?your service users. I'll look forward to responses (up to and through moderate flames) as nelsonking@earthlink.net
The Subscriber Side #2: Pamper Me!
If you want my business, you're going to have to do better than just quick, reliable service. You've got to make it easy and pleasant to be your customer.
by Nelson King [July 14, 1999]
You can only do so much. Resources like time, money, and staff are always limited. Some details fall through the cracks. I understand this reality for ISPs.
But guess what: I don't care?especially when it comes to the details of customer service.
I call ISP-A for technical support (I needed a massive message removed from the queue). What I get is a telephone answering system with a menu that I follow three levels deep before I find out that I've got the wrong number for technical support. I dial technical support and, of course, get the answering system again. This time I need only go two levels into the menu, but they want my customer ID. After I hunt down a recent bill to get the number, I struggle to enter the mix of alpha and numeric characters. Once the ID is entered, I'm informed that the tech support department is "not available" and would I please leave a message and phone number.
At ISP-B, I get a real live person on the phone at the first try. She tells me the name of the tech support person on duty and makes the connection.
ISP-A has a web site that changes some content about every six months. It still features K56 Flex modem support (as if V.90 didn't exist yet), and doesn't explain anything about DSL service (although I know they offer it). ISP-B has a web site where content is changed more often than a baby's diaper. While I wouldn't call its coverage deep, at least it's updated with current services and tends to offer useful information.
Speaking of web sites, ISP-A allows 5MB for a subscriber's web site, B allows 6MB. No big difference. However ISP-A will send you instructions (yes, on paper) on how to upload files to your website. ISP-B has an online tutorial. Neither is fancy compared to providers like Earthlink that have online software to help customers create a web site.
ISP-A sends me a monthly bill. It's a crudely formatted 8.5 x 11 sheet that doesn't even have the company logo and phone number on it. That's all I ever see of this ISP. ISP-B, on the other hand, makes it possible to have the monthly charge placed on a credit card. They also send a monthly newsletter, usually running four or six pages, that keeps me about as informed as I'd care to be.
ISP A seems to believe that no subscriber will ever show up in person. It's one thing not to be rich and therefore have offices in an older building, but it's another to have offices that look like a slum. It also helps to have somebody greet the occasional visitor who can form complete sentences. ISP-B has a few small rooms in an old Victorian house. The offices looked well lived in but organized and the staff is downright loquacious.
Enough of the litany. Every subscriber can make his or her own list of comparisons?and they do. Neither of the two ISPs I dealt with is large. Both have staffs of fewer than eight and subscriber lists that run less than 15,000. Neither is low-balling their rates nor offering a wide range of other services. Needless to say, only one of them got my permanent business.
Why haven't I touched on reliable, fast service? I want that, of course. But let's face it; these days, just about every ISP delivers good service?within a very narrow range of prices. In this climate, customer-oriented details loom very large.
For me, loyalty to an ISP is based mostly on the brief, ephemeral contacts I have in dealing with the organization. Small outfits often have a lot of good will from their initial subscribers, but it won't withstand much abuse. Part of that good will lies in the expectation of more personal attention and a "we try harder" attitude.
So, it's probably worth whatever trouble it takes to remove the small rocks and smooth the little hard places. There are just too many other providers your customers can turn to.
Catering to Special Customers
Marketing Internet services to particular communities can boost your bottom line, but to be successful, this kind of campaign must be handled with finesse.
by Kevin Beauchamp [September 14, 1999]
Not long ago, I received an e-mail from an ISP asking my opinion on how they should approach "localizing" their services. Ironically, it is something we've been working on recently. This is a marketing approach that can do more than just add local flavor: It can instill tremendous customer loyalty.
Localizing is when a company molds itself to fit into a specific community of customers. In many cases, this involves translating their website into another language. But to localize effectively, a company must communicate with the targeted community in ways that go beyond just presenting their company website in a particular language.
Localizing can be expensive?which is why many ISP have a difficult time making the effort?but like everything else to do with marketing, it need not be. There may well be an ethnic or socially focused Chamber of Commerce in your area that would be more than willing to help you out in reaching the Chamber's focus community.
Extend your family
You should definitely consider hiring an ethnic consultant or employee capable of reading and writing in the local language and assisting you in designing or collecting content that will appeal to the community you're addressing. This should be someone who can do more than simply speak and read the appropriate language, though: Make sure he or she can really communicate well in this language. A "localized" company brochure or website that looks as if it was written by a five-year-old just learning the language will not be an effective marketing tool.
Furthermore, language is only the beginning. Your consultant or employee should also be steeped in the culture you're attempting to localize to. He or she should be knowledgeable about the community's ethnic or cultural interests and the programs, content, and marketing that should most appeal to community members. You don't want to promote your ISP with a barbecue rib picnic when your target audience is vegetarians. While this example is rather glaring, understanding and reflecting the subtle cultural nuances of specific groups will definitely help your cause.
Include, don't exclude
Keep in mind also that while niche marketing programs?including localizing your company's services?can be effective, they can also backfire. In going the localizing route, you must be careful not to alienate the rest of your potential market. Customers come from all walks of life; maintaining a site that panders to one specific group to the exclusion of all others can keep you from really growing. Mass-media advertising a site at yourcompany.com to everyone in your market is great, but if the site is available exclusively in Spanish, you've wasted those dollars on a majority of English-speaking potential customers.
Furthermore, many social, religious, and ethnic groups have big problems with other social, religious, and ethnic groups. Walking the fine line of balance (avoiding offending anyone) is important if you want to create a service that everyone enjoys using. Try not to limit the customers you can obtain by focusing so strongly on one market that it alienates any or all of the others.
Creating alliances with niche groups can be a very compelling marketing strategy and one that can reduce churn and spread the word about your company quickly. Doing it right means bringing in the right people who can really create the right cultural nuances that attract your target market; but at the same time, do not alienate other potential customers.
Keeping Customers: Part 1 -
Quality of Service
Every customer you retain is a customer you don' t have to replace. More important, happy customers send you new customers. Service is key.
by Jason Zigmont HowToSell.net [September 10, 1999]
Corny as it may sound, as an ISP, your middle name is 'service.' Good service is critical to retaining customers?which, in turn, is critical to attracting new ones. It's a fact: Most ISPs report that the largest number of new users comes from referrals?and only happy customers will refer new ones to you.
The term 'Quality of Service' (QoS), has undergone an evolution?from a descriptive phrase, to a quantifiable attribute of what you, as an ISP, sell to your customers. QoS is usually expressed in a percentage of uptime, such as 99.9 percent, or as 'how many 9s'. Many business customers are now looking for Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that commit you to a specified QoS level?and often mandate a monetary refund for your failing to meet that committment. Do you know what your QoS level is?
Even if your customers don't demand one, you should make a SLA with yourself. That is, commit yourself to providing a certain level of service. It should cover uptime, busy signals, throughput, and many other technical issues.
Keep yourself honest
The hardest part of providing technically superior service is in measuring it? a prerequisite to figuring out what needs to be changed.
Do you know how many busy signals you have?
What is your user-to-modem ratio?
Do you know how many dropped calls you have during busy times?
Do you know what your uptime is?
Do you know what your Internet access capacity usage is?
Once you develop answers to these questions, then you can use them to improve your service. In turn, the improvements become central to your marketing. If you can prove your QoS commitment to yourself, it shouldn't be hard to convince customers to use your service.
To outsource or not . . .
Customer service?both technical and on the billing side?is an area that is often overlooked. Many ISPs these days are turning to outsourced technical support?mostly for the wrong reason: cost. IMHO, customer service is an area where cost should never be a determining factor. A dollar saved on customer service can cost you hundreds in the end. Remember: The average disgruntled customer tells 10 people about it, while the satisfied one tells only four.
If you are considering outsourcing, keep in mind that in doing so you will relinquish something approaching 50 percent control over the quality of your customers' experience. Customers will now have two points of contact, in separate locations and with different organizations. You'll need to make sure that your outsourcing provider represents your company in a way that reflects favorably on you. Check up. Call your outsourcing provider posing as a user. Do it a number of times, at different times of day; see how they handle you. Think about it from a customer's standpoint. Do you want the person answering the telephone to represent your company?
Speed matters
If you keep customer service in house (as I'd urge you to do), keep an eye on average call times and?more importantly?hold times. Users seem to deal pretty well with hold times in the 5 minute range, but as hold times stretch to 10 minutes, they become increasingly upset. Average technical support calls are around 7 minutes. I'd recommend making pretty darned sure you don't exceed this.
One customer-service aid well worth implementring is a call tracking system. First of all, compiling a permanent history of all interactions you've had with each customer helps your staff personalize service. Second, keeping comprehensive records of problems that come up helps you proactively improve your operations, resulting in happier customers overall. And?to say it one last time?happy customers refer new customers to you . . . and you profit.
Keeping Customers: Part 2 -
Relationship Building
A low-key non-relationship with customers may be okay if you're a monopoly like the local telco or power company?but not if you're an ISP.
by Jason Zigmont HowToSell.net [September 17, 1999]
As an ISP, you have to deal with churn. Churn is the number of users that terminate service with you on a monthly basis. Most ISPs admit to a churn rate of 2 to 3 percent per month?or between 25 and 33 percent per year! If your churn rate is typical, then, you've got to bring in more than 2 percent of new business every month just to stay in the same place! To actually grow your business, you need to do significantly more!
In last week's column, Quality of Service, we discussed improving your overall service as a strategy for keeping customers, but today we'll take a look at ways to lower your churn rate by cultivating an active relationship with subscribers.
Special content
One key to lowering your churn is to offer services or content that your users can only get from your ISPs. Many ISPs have taken the first step in this, which is to localize their home page. A number of services, such as Planet Direct, Snap!, and LookSmart make this fairly simple by providing cookie-cutter local content that ISPs can use.
Tip: Never look on the content as a moneymaker. You may, in fact, manage to work out an add split with the provider, but this is not the point. The content is there as a service to users; any extra revenue it provides is a bonus.
Great as localized content is, I never recommend putting it on your index page. Local content has a way of taking over the page, and new users coming there to sign up often have to spend considerable time hunting around amid the local content before finding your subscription form . (While I always recommend against this, it is possible to do it right. Telco and ISP SNET is one company that managed it nicely.)
A better idea is a 'Members Only' section. This can house local content, plus many other things that users will find useful. Members Only sections can and should include items such as; a member's forum, specials or coupons, a user web ring, a system update page, and any other information you feel you can give to your users. I've seen ISPs post employee bios, employee of the month features, pictures, and many other little items that give the ISP a personal feel. Subscribers love it!
Communicate regularly
Another way to maintain a relationahip with subscribers?one that's met with a high level of success?is to publish a newsletter, either via e-mail or via postal mail. E-mail is of course cheaper, but you can easily put a print newsletter in with your invoices and have a much better impact with your users. A number of companies, of which Incogneto is one, can make this even easier by providing semi-customized content.
When all is said and done, the bottom line is to be creative. For example, one time I organized a customer-appreciation party. It was held at a local Cyber Caf?hich was one of our customers. The local radio station (another of our customers) sent some folks over. The customers absolutely loved it!
The 14 Deadly Sins of MindSpring ? or Ways that We Can Be Just Like Everybody Else
by Jason Zigmont HowToSell.net [January 21, 2000]
(Note; The core of this column is reprinted here with permission. Special thanks go to Lance Weatherby, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. -JZ)
In the world of ISP marketing, I have yet to find a company that is a better example than MindSpring. From the beginning, MindSpring always kept an eye on the details, and has done just about everything right. While AOL may have more users, MindSpring's users are much more loyal, are acquired at a lowercost, and are happier overall.
Nearly a year ago, Charles Brewer, CEO of MindSpring, articulated the 14 deadly sins, and Lance was nice enough to reprint the entire list on the ISP-Marketing discussion community.
These are essential rules that all ISPs should live by. I have posted them herem (along with my comments in small type) for you to consider.
Give lousy service?busy signals, disconnects, downtime, and ring-no-answers.
The easiest way to loose dial-up customers is by breaking #1. Do you track your usage? Do you know if your CLEC/LEC is truly providing P.01 level of service? - JZ
Rely on outside vendors who let us down.
Make internal procedures easy on us, even if it means negatively affecting or inconveniencing the customer.
Remember the saying "The customer always comes first"? The saying has been around for ages, and by making something easy on yourself, and putting yourself first, will cause you to end up in last place. - JZ
Joke about how dumb the customers are.
Every time you call a user a luser, idiot, or the like, you show your disregard for the customer. While joking around after hours may seem like fun, it will influence the way you see customers, and therefore the way you treat them. - JZ
Finger point at how other departments are not doing their job.
My mother always said "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". If you have constructive criticism, or some way to help another department, then express it. If you're looking to pass the buck, or boost your ego by putting another department down, then grow up, and keep it to yourself. - JZ
Customers can't get immediate "live" help from sales or support.
Service is king. Customers will stay on hold for only so long before they'll leave. One thing that amazes me about some ISPs is that there is no hold time for sales, as new sales are important, but a hold queue for tech support. It's much easier to keep customers then to find new ones. - JZ
Poor coordination across departments.
Is there a way for sales to talk to tech or vice versa? How about billing and sales? Management and the rest of the world? The Dilbert effect has killed many companies. Don't let it kill yours. - JZ
Show up at a demo, sales call, trade show, or meeting unprepared.
Preparation is the key to a successful demo, sales call, etc.. If you go into a meeting unprepared, you will waste everyone's time and loose the respect of the people you are meeting with. - JZ
Ignore the competition, they are far inferior to us.
Unless you know your competition's strengths and weaknesses, you will never know how to beat them. Just as important is to know whom your competition truly is. Is your competition AOL or the mom and pop across the street? - JZ
Miss deadlines that we commit to internally and externally.
Never cut yourself short on time. Both internally and externally, it is better to set a realistic deadline and make it, then to have to ask for extra time as the deadline comes near. Remember that other people's deadlines may rest on you making yours. - JZ
Make recruiting, hiring, and training a lower priority because we are too busy doing other tasks.
Finding, and keeping, trained, qualified people, is the hardest task any company has. The Internet market compounds this problem, as the number of qualified people is limited, and the good ones all have jobs already. - JZ
Look for the next job assignment, instead of focusing on the current one.
If it is worth doing, its worth doing well. When you don't focus on the job at hand, you short both yourself and your company. - JZ
Indulge in office gossip, rumors, and politics.
More time has been lost in gossip, rumors and politics then any other place in a corporate environment. For example, in a sales environment, there are always the winners and the losers. Finding the losers is very easy. Walk by the water cooler. The ones standing around talking to each other are 9 times out of 10, the losers. - JZ
Rely on dissatisfied customers to be your service monitors.
If you wait for your customers to leave to find out why they left, then you are throwing money out the door. Customer surveys are easily done, and can save you customers that you may have otherwise lost. - JZ
Spit Happens
Things go wrong; there's nothing you can do to stop that. What makes the difference is how you handle it.
by Jason Zigmont HowToSell.net [December 3, 1999]
As I walked through the streets of my hometown recently, I saw a baby with a bib that boldly proclaimed 'Spit Happens.'
Corny, I know, but the phrase it's playing off comes up all too frequently around many ISP shops. Most of us have Murphy on our payroll whether we want him or not.
The ISP industry?and its 'cutting edge' technology?tends to have good and bad days. We've all had those days when the server goes south at 3 AM, or our favorite telco is attacked by a backhoe, or. . . . However, wthe way you handle the problems that arise makes all the difference in the business consequences.
The best policy
The key is to be honest. When disaster strikes, remember that it's not the end of the world, and even the biggest providers have problems. If you are honest and up front with your customers, you'll most likely discover that they are willing to accomodate a lot of the 'spit' that happens.
Many moons ago when I was first getting my feet wet in this ISP stuff, the ISP I was working at decided to move from our pile of USR Sportsters to a nice Microcomm ISPorte, which had great blinky lights. (They really did. An ISPorte on top of a Xyplex Network 9000, which was black with more blinky lights, looked very impressive.)
We decided it would be no problem to switch modems at 3 PM?a slow time for us?one by one. And so we did. (This happened to be our largest POP?over 750 users calling into it?which in 1996 was sizable in Connecticut.)
Unh-oh!
Things looked good until about 6:00 PM when everyone started to call in and the ISPorte decided to loose its NVRAM settings one by one. The short and sweet of the story is that during our peak time, for 6 hours at our biggest POP, we had zero dial-up connectivity.
I have to say that while I use this ISP to illustrate many of my what-not-to-do stories, the organization showed grace under pressure on this occasion. They placed a message about the outage on our 'hold' music, gave a realistic time-to-repair estimate, and took people's numbers, promising to notify them when the POP was back up. When it did come back up, we called every customer who left a contact number and sent out an explanatory e-mail.
And to our amazement, we didn't loose a single customer.
The moral of the story is that when spit happens, you need to face the music (sorry for the mixed metaphors): Be up front and honest with your customers. Nine times out of ten, they will understand. But people hate being lied to and treated like kids.
We all have bad days. We just need hope they are few and far between?and fix things as fast as possible.
The Subscriber Side #1: Protect Me!
We don't want our ISPs to be law enforcement agencies any more than we want our health care determined by an underwriting clerk. Still, is there a role for service providers in shielding subscribers from unwanted content?
by Nelson King [June 21, 1999]
Spam, porn, hackers, scams, viruses?the growing list of nasties that are evolving with the Internet have a lot of people concerned. I'm one of them. This is worse than software updates. More and more things to watch out for, yet I have so little time and perhaps lack the expertise to do it right. I don't blame people who are looking for help. I'm even understanding about people who want to move some of the responsibility onto other shoulders?like onto the government or the ISP.
Not so long ago, politicians made a great roar discovering the issue of pornography on the Web. A lot of old-time Net users thought this was posturing or much ado about nothing; sex after all is part of life and the Net is life so the Net will have sex. I don't know how many of these inveterate Net trekkers have children but it doesn't seem like they had much of a clue about the sensitivities of parents. "Protect the children" sentiment runs deep and brooks no political opposition whatsoever. The result was that we almost got the CDA.
Under the hot lights of a newly engaged press, Internet users, both rational and irrational, began to cast about for points where children could be effectively protected from exposure to pornography. At the time it seemed only three solutions were viable: general legislation, user control (via blocking software), or force ISPs to become censors. I remember a great panic that swept through the Internet community-and ISPs in particular-about the call for service providers to police Internet content.
In loco parentis?
In a way the ISP might seem like today's schools-a convenient place to dump responsibilities that properly belong with the family or with individual parents. If I'm a busy working parent, and I don't know much about the Internet, but I do know that my kids need to be protected, why wouldn't I look toward some centralized point that could?technically at least?help block unwanted content?
I know. There are many valid arguments as to why ISPs shouldn't be involved with censorship of any kind. The "we are only the conduit" argument, along with the parallels to the legal freedoms of the publishing media have been widely disseminated. On the other hand, the oft-quoted example of someone yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater points up a scenario in which a lay person (the theater owner) is empowered to take quasi-legal action. The ISP position may be analogous. Certain services?such as chat and hosted Web sites?may be illegal and harmful, and the ISP would be expected to take some action.
Mirroring the law
Back in February, for example, MindSpring shut down the anti-abortion Web site of Neal Horsley for violating its 'appropriate use policies'. This was shortly after an Oregon jury ruled the site constituted a threat to abortion providers. Nearly all ISPs have language in their contracts that provide for restrictions on site content and remedies for illegal and unwarranted behavior. Users see this and realize the ISP isn't completely neutral-something more than a conduit, something less than a censor.
I don't want my ISP to be a law enforcement agency any more than I want my medical care to be determined by an underwriting clerk. It's not their job. But I might not mind an ISP offering blocking services?even for a fee. If parents don't have time to keep blocking lists up-to-date (or even install the blocking software in the first place), maybe they would be willing to have an ISP do it. The same might apply to spam, viruses, or other blocking type services where professional expertise might be a real benefit. Why not?
Obviously I'm not speaking for everybody, although in this column I'll strive to represent both Joe Public and Mr. Solid Corporate Customer?your service users. I'll look forward to responses (up to and through moderate flames) as nelsonking@earthlink.net
The Subscriber Side #2: Pamper Me!
If you want my business, you're going to have to do better than just quick, reliable service. You've got to make it easy and pleasant to be your customer.
by Nelson King [July 14, 1999]
You can only do so much. Resources like time, money, and staff are always limited. Some details fall through the cracks. I understand this reality for ISPs.
But guess what: I don't care?especially when it comes to the details of customer service.
I call ISP-A for technical support (I needed a massive message removed from the queue). What I get is a telephone answering system with a menu that I follow three levels deep before I find out that I've got the wrong number for technical support. I dial technical support and, of course, get the answering system again. This time I need only go two levels into the menu, but they want my customer ID. After I hunt down a recent bill to get the number, I struggle to enter the mix of alpha and numeric characters. Once the ID is entered, I'm informed that the tech support department is "not available" and would I please leave a message and phone number.
At ISP-B, I get a real live person on the phone at the first try. She tells me the name of the tech support person on duty and makes the connection.
ISP-A has a web site that changes some content about every six months. It still features K56 Flex modem support (as if V.90 didn't exist yet), and doesn't explain anything about DSL service (although I know they offer it). ISP-B has a web site where content is changed more often than a baby's diaper. While I wouldn't call its coverage deep, at least it's updated with current services and tends to offer useful information.
Speaking of web sites, ISP-A allows 5MB for a subscriber's web site, B allows 6MB. No big difference. However ISP-A will send you instructions (yes, on paper) on how to upload files to your website. ISP-B has an online tutorial. Neither is fancy compared to providers like Earthlink that have online software to help customers create a web site.
ISP-A sends me a monthly bill. It's a crudely formatted 8.5 x 11 sheet that doesn't even have the company logo and phone number on it. That's all I ever see of this ISP. ISP-B, on the other hand, makes it possible to have the monthly charge placed on a credit card. They also send a monthly newsletter, usually running four or six pages, that keeps me about as informed as I'd care to be.
ISP A seems to believe that no subscriber will ever show up in person. It's one thing not to be rich and therefore have offices in an older building, but it's another to have offices that look like a slum. It also helps to have somebody greet the occasional visitor who can form complete sentences. ISP-B has a few small rooms in an old Victorian house. The offices looked well lived in but organized and the staff is downright loquacious.
Enough of the litany. Every subscriber can make his or her own list of comparisons?and they do. Neither of the two ISPs I dealt with is large. Both have staffs of fewer than eight and subscriber lists that run less than 15,000. Neither is low-balling their rates nor offering a wide range of other services. Needless to say, only one of them got my permanent business.
Why haven't I touched on reliable, fast service? I want that, of course. But let's face it; these days, just about every ISP delivers good service?within a very narrow range of prices. In this climate, customer-oriented details loom very large.
For me, loyalty to an ISP is based mostly on the brief, ephemeral contacts I have in dealing with the organization. Small outfits often have a lot of good will from their initial subscribers, but it won't withstand much abuse. Part of that good will lies in the expectation of more personal attention and a "we try harder" attitude.
So, it's probably worth whatever trouble it takes to remove the small rocks and smooth the little hard places. There are just too many other providers your customers can turn to.
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