NB: This is a guest post by Murray Harold, a homeworking business travel agent from Buckinghamshire, UK.
As technology evolves, we have seen some excellent innovation, some brilliant ideas and heralded the arrival of many, many startups.
That said, one person in all this seems to be getting missed out: the customer. You may remember “the customer” – that is the person that, at the end of the day, who pays your bills.
The customer is not really the main target of a startup, though, is it? The main target is the venture capitalist – and the exit strategy.
The idea is not to produce something that customers will find useful, but to produce something which can be made to look useful and thence sold to someone for a (usually inappropriate) sum of money that will make somebody filthy rich.
We manage to forget the customer at both ends of our venture. Do we really start something because there is a real demand for a product or service – or does what we wish to do simply fall into the “be reasonable, do it my way” category?
You can usually spot these. Anyone watching the BBC’s Dragon’s Den (or similar pitch-type show) would find it easy to categorise such ideas. There are few who seem to spend a lot of time on customer research, evaluating how things are done now and then going through the lengthy process of working out how to do things better.
Those that go through this process, we have seen, are, on balance, a lot more successful.
Lament the loss  of customer service
We manage to forget the customer, again, at the tail end of our process – where the product or service meets the end user. The last thing any firm seems to want, these days, is to have to actually communicate with our customers.
If we do have to communicate with these nasty, smelly things, then best at arms length – or at least at email form’s length.
We hide our telephone numbers, we use a PO Box for an address, we make customers go through endless pages of FAQ’s (which is odd, given how difficult it is to communicate with many firms, how those questions became “frequently asked” in the first place) and finally, we provide a premium rate number which only operates at certain times, has many options and the invariable 20-minute wait.
It does not matter how wonderful our product or service is. The most critical part of any operation is where the service touches the end user. Yet at this point, it is usually the lowest paid, least motivated person who has that task.
Further, the point of contact person is increasingly not someone who can take possession of – and more importantly – fix a problem. Time was, when you could, at an airport, grab any passing uniformed person who would listen and, nine times out of ten, be able to say “come with me” and fix the given issue.
Most first contact people now can offer but platitudes and that soul-destroying indication that he or she will have to find someone… who will have to find someone… who will have to find someone!!
In a society where jobs are at a premium and so wages are at a minimum, it is easy to use the fear of loss of job as a means of motivation. Yet if this situation changes (and sooner or later, it will), what will be the result?
Bad precedent
Our interface with the end user is at risk. We have the best technology, the best website, we have put millions into our project – but if one day, when jobs are a little more plentiful, our “fear of loss of job”-driven customer-facing employee simply says “go away, I can’t be bothered” and walks off to a better paid job, then we have a big problem.
Any firm that spends a bit more time engaging with customers and is SEEN to be engaging with customers, with well trained motivated staff (ie properly paid), who will be the winner?
The objective is, at present, not to take possession of and resolve a problem. The objective is to pass it on, to hope the problem resolves itself or that it will simply go away or that it can be passed into a giant mill which will not produce a resolution unless it appears, say, in a column of the press.
Although technology makes great strides, our treatment and marginalisation of the end user is a major issue as is, indeed, the blinkered view of many startups who cannot differentiate between “customer need” and “personal bee-in-the-bonnet”.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been many instances when these two factors meet, but they are rare – and getting rarer.
Another question to ponder whuch is very relevant – and indicative – of the above: who decided that everything has to be so cheap? Perhaps the time has come to forget “the cheapest” and pursue a new line: “best value” – the two are very, very different.
NB: This is a guest post by Murray Harold, a homeworking business travel agent from Buckinghamshire, UK.
NB2: Love customers image via Shutterstock.
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Well said Murray. All too often the customer (whether B2B or B2C) is treated as a cost center. Automating is seen as a way to reduce cost of acquisition and sale. Once the sale is done, any other “customer service” is seen as a cost to be avoided. I think businesses like Zappos and Rackspace, with their fanatical customer support philosophies are starting to shift the status quo though. Personalized customer service is now seen as a competitive advantage and those businesses that can capitalize on this will win.
Good article as per Murray
I worry that tech start-ups look to travel agents and think “F*ck them they’re dinosaurs”
You know who has great customer service online?
Amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=502564
Have you used them? can get through tout de suite or they’ll call you back. Likey a lot.
You know has great customer servivce offline?
Pret a Manger – you can speak to their Directors
http://www.pret.com/customer_services/
Put it this way – you’re a start-up – servicing a genuine need (FOCUS PEOPLE), you’ve taken a genuine risk. You’ve built (so bloody hard to do) something great. You’ve trained, raised capital, worked your arse off – and you end up getting known as shysters coz your service levels were shite… Not clever.
You deal with customers because things *will* go wrong. Might not be your fault. Might cost you money. Might need to spend money dealing with the issue. Might need trained staff.
You *just* know that you need to build that into your initial costs.
Moreover if you’re an old head and experienced VC you need to know what is *really* needed when it comes to service. Maybe they are the only people that start-ups really listen too…
You all know what’s needed…
I mostly agree with your sentiments, and those that have already commented.
Where I differ is that some startup businesses truly are not meant for a high level of customer interaction. Whereas travel agents and those that book travel certainly should be easy to reach, travel planning or travel social sites are more self-service by their nature – if you don’t like them, your recourse is to use a travel agent or travel professional (with a likely commensurate increase in cost).
But the lack of any dominate travel planning website (and the utter failure of many) should also tell you that no one has figured out how to satisfy the needs of a significant population of users. I have my own theories, born out of my own experiences in building a travel planning startup, and certainly one of them would be that no one has figured out the customer interaction process well enough that their users feel they can not only get information out of the service, but contribute to it too.
For instance, when dealing with a travel agent, they ask questions and you respond, then you ask questions and they respond, and so on. Websites can provide information, but they are still lousy at answering questions. And though some services have tried ways of asking questions, the questions they ask are canned and not responsive to what has already transpired. It’s a tough nut to crack.
But VC’s keep hoping that someone has “cracked the code” of the users needs, and they prefer investing in ideas that can scale quickly – those with humans in the loop don’t scale easily, so it’s rare if they get serious attention when young (which is when they need it most). I don’t know if that will ever change, but I hope it does.
Reminded me of this tweet that’s been flying about:
“A million guys walk in to a Silicon Valley bar. None of them buy anything. The bar is declared a rousing success.” via @Quoraâ€
So somebody has seen The Social Network, heard a lot of noise made by Silicon Valley startups, witnessed some lousy executions of mediocre ideas, despised the swagger of a few – and somehow arrived at the conclusion that every startup is inept at doing things properly.
I work with startups every day. It’s my job. Exactly none of them care about an exit or an IPO. They only care about VCs because VCs have money, and it’s challenging to scale any business without it. But the startups I see care about customers an inordinate amount. The VCs I see working with them are smart enough to care about customers too.
Plenty of teams get it wrong, but it’s not out of a lack of care or respect for the customers. As a commenter has pointed out, travel is an incredibly complex beast to tackle with technology – that doesn’t mean we should stop trying, but it does mean startups will get it wrong often than right. Skyscanner cracked it. Tripit cracked it. Hipmunk cracked it. There are successes and far, far more failures – some deservedly so. But to tar every startup that even tries as clueless or uncaring about customers, as having no interest in delivering value – you’re dead wrong.
If I was a travel startup reading such a bitter, uneducated post that makes such sweeping generalisations about an entire industry, I’d probably be left thinking “fuck them, they’re dinosaurs” too.
I don’t think you will ever crack the code of user needs. If you have one million travel enquiries, you would have one million variations on a theme.
This “cost” of using an agent is a tad irritating. Yes, agents do charge and sometimes quite a few dollars – thing is, one is getting added value. There are no “Order Taker” travel agents left and if there are a few still around, they will not last long. As I have always said, the one thing that traditional travel agents have had to worry about with the advent of online competition, is that they will have to become, well, travel agents.
Indeed, many agents, myself included, will happily say to someone, having listened to a request: “Look, Go to such and such a website and book this online” – as an agent, we cannot add value to a travel request (or to put it another way, there is no money in it). Further, a travel agent costs you nothing unless we are basked to do something – and the amount of money we ask is not exactly equivalent to a lawyer’s fee (or – ahem! – a techys). If anything, travel is becoming more complex. For the average Jo Public, time was when you just went to your agent (who, if they were any good, knew you and your foibles) and all you had to do was say “I have a week off next week, sort us out something, would you?”
Now, you are expected to research it yourself, (assuming you have enough time) hope that the website you are getting the info from is okay, book online with someone who you hope is okay, and then travel with someone who you hope is okay and hope that when you get there, the hotel you have booked is okay … and …. and …. If anything goes belly-up, well … errrr …. tough.
Symantics will have to make some pretty big strides to get close, I would venture. In the meanwhile, most startups do fall into the “variations on a theme” category … I have not seen many (any?) that can improve, for, inter alia, itinerary purposes, on Sabre’s Virtuallythere or Amadeus’s Checkmytrip. Or, as I mention above, the “bee-in-a-bonnet” startups.
@Larry Smith – Love it. Just about sums things up!
Murray,
Your premise of customer focus clearly is an important one and your article highlights a lot of issues about how businesses should conduct things in general. More people should read it.
However, I don’t think singling out start-ups is fair. If there is one thing that start-ups care about greatly, it’s the customer. Talk to great entrepreneurs and they will burn with passion about solving a customer problem. After all, that’s their differentiating factor to begin with because how else could they convince customers to switch from existing solutions to theirs? Truth be told, I have yet to meet a successful and well-run start-up that doesn’t care greatly about its customers. Sure, there are bad apples, but I don’t think the ratio is worse compared to established companies. In fact, some of my worst customer service experiences has been with established companies. What start-ups lack in process quality, they make up for effort. Just from our personal experience running a travel start-up: when we first introduced a phone number on our website 1 month into launching the site, we just set up a Skype-in number that would route all calls to our personal mobile phones 24/7. Not fun waking up at 3am to receive a call from the US but it had to be done. In most cases, start-ups treat customers much better than their own employees (not kidding) because customer is the lifeline for start-ups. Another issue is that start-ups are often created because of the entrepreneur’s own dissatisfaction how a customer problem is being solved based on personal experience, so there’s a much larger personal attachment.
Also, in the travel space, we probably need to differentiate between different types of start-ups. A trip planning tool has a strong customer focus but it doesn’t really customer service (except for maybe technical support). If your site doesn’t deal with bookings and fulfilment, customer service is probably less of an issue.
As for “VCs”, they really, really care about repeat customers and understand that great customer focus (including amazing customer service) is the most important customer retention tool. Repeat customers who come back (the more often the better) because of a great customer experience increase the lifetime value of customers and there are few things VCs love more. Most successful VCs understand that the value of a company is equivalent to the value it creates for customers in the long-term and that as an investment company, you can only win in the long-term anway. If this basic goal alignment were not given, I would seriously worry about the VC’s investment strategy.
It’s also hard to have a big exit (disregarding talent or technology acquisitions for now) without a strong and loyal customer base. Numbers don’t lie (unless you fake them).
The press and media tend to make start-up sound easy and glamorous, and if you read news about start-ups you would think the start-up landscape is filled with overnight successes and large exits by lucky, customer-agnostic tech nerds. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, VCs and start-ups care about exits, but they understand that this is in line, and not in contrast to a strong customer focus.
Murray Harold,
I am agree with you. Your instance on customer focus clearly is an important one and you highlights a lot of issues wich is also important newcomer nike me. This artilce is useful one for me.
Tao, thank you for taking the time to reply: Yes, I accept that there are as many (perhaps more, even) of establish (travel) firms who have gone online and put up the barricades. Who view the customer as being a rather irritating element in the equation. The larger the firm, the greater the tendency to remove themselves from the customer. I recently booked a package holiday with an established operator and the closer I get to travelling, the more intense the emails become, invariably selling something; yet my one email to the operator remains unanswered.
It’s the “burning passion to solve a customer problem” with which I take issue. The line between “customer problem” and “this really hacks me off” is quite blurred; it is easy to identify a “customer problem” for being a personal issue – the “bee-in-the-bonnet” to which I refer. Whereas one can argue that if one solves one, one solves the other, without a thorough grounding in (whatever, really) industry one can easily get into the old way of: “identifying problems that do not exist, analysing them incorrectly and applying inappropriate solutions”. Worse, not bothering to see if a solution has been tried before … and then looking at why it did not work. What we finish up with is, are variations on a theme – nothing more.
That you have a 24/7 contact number is admirable. My customers ask me what my opening hours are and my reply (and probably yours, by the sound of it) is “… any time you damn well please”. I like a website that clearly shows who they are, where they are and make it easy to get hold of someone – and by “someone” I mean someone who can take possession of and fix, an issue. Not some mind-numblingly moronic call centre that has to refer to an answer sheet to deal with a question such as “what is your name?”. The buck stops with me. I hear your issue, I will take possession of it and I will resolve it.
The danger is always that with growth, so increases this distancing from the customer. Obviously any CEO cannot answer all questions – but that removal becomes a replacement of the customer interface of someone who can take possession of and resolve any given issue, with someone who can purely produce platitudes. It’s easier that way. No-one likes saying “No” – so farm the process out – or, at least, bury it on the off chance it may just go away.
Looking at any VC company, though, one of the first questions asked by VC’s is “What is your exit startegy”. VC’s want their money back. Better, they want it back quickly and with a high return. So, there is no way you can paint VC’s as being the champion of the consumer. If a bit of customer attention helps that objective, so much the better – otherwise it’s “get in, build volume, get out” Such a strategy can do an industry more harm than good.
Oh! And for the record. No, I have not seen the Social Network. I know about the Facebook guy, though and admire what he achieved. There is no resentment at all and it’s rather petty to assume there is. I manage quite well, thank you. I do not have a helicopter or a Rolls Royce. That said, the mortgage was paid last month and the Volvo has a full tank of diesel.
@Paul – Skyscanner and the like are helpful tools in certain circumstances but not much more. There have been plenty of occasions when I have had to rename some similar sites “hoplesslyunrealistictravelsolutions -dot-com” and really feel rather sorry for the general public who may get caught by some of the rather more fanciful options offered. As an agent, one can read between the lines and see what makes sense and what is just plain rubbish (and there is plenty of that). Not to mention the times when one has to deal with the: “this or that website says I can go first class across the Atlantic for $100 – would you book it for me”
We may be dinosaurs – but clearly not extinct yet and by all accounts not going to be extinct for some time. Whilst we are around, remember: Dinosaurs are very, very large … and they bite.
Ooops! That @Paul should be up one paragraph.