For many independent ISP operators, your business is a direct reflection of everything you do. When is the last time you took a long, hard look at how your customers perceive you, your employees, and the services your ISP business provides to its subscribers?

by Brock Henderson Brock Henderson & Associates [September 23, 2002]

Every day we look at ourselves in the mirror and if we see something askew we fix it—it's a simple enough process—I'll bet most of you do it more than once a day. But when was the last time you held your business up to the mirror to see if anything was out of whack?

One way you can hold you ISP business up to the mirror is to have your friends call technical support posing as customers in an effort to see how your support staff is performing. How many rings before they answer the phone? Are they patient and courteous? Do they sound genuinely concerned about helping the customer? Did they give the correct answer?

What about your ISP's billing department staffѿare they patient and courteous when an upset customer calls about a perceived billing error? Do they attempt to calm the customer or do they toss gasoline on a potentially hot issue. It doesn't matter if the customer is right or wrong, do they handle the customer with respect?

If you can't answer these questions, how can you be certain that your customers are pleased with your service?

Checking on employees to ensure they are maintaining the level of customer service you desire is not underhanded or sneaky, it is a necessary part of business. Here are some other ways you can keep tabs on how well your employees are interacting with your customers:

1) Secret Shopper: Brick and mortar businesses employ people called "Secret Shoppers" whose job is simply to have typical interactions with staff and evaluate their performance. While this may seem a little sneaky or underhanded it is the only true way management has of knowing if staff are doing what is expected and providing the level and quality of service expected by management.

The process is simple, the Secret Shopper, (it may be one or more individuals at a time), comes in and measures or evaluates whatever multiple criteria you have assigned. It might concern how long it takes a salesperson to approach them, whether or not the salesperson tries to up-sell them, did they offer the additional programs, and whatever else you have identified as important. After leaving the store, the Secret Shopper fills out a report starting with the name of the individual and indicates which items the individual did correctly, and which were not performed correctly. The report is sent to you and then it is typically passed down the chain of command to the employee named in the report.

2) Record All Telephone Calls and Randomly Monitor: It's not uncommon in the industry to monitor technical support calls, but how many of you monitor calls to sales or billing?

By monitoring telephone calls to your sales department you catch missed opportunities to close a sale or to up-sell an existing or potential customer; these become training tools to help those in sales and support do a better job.

Monitoring billing is an excellent way to document a negative situation with a customer should it ever get to point you have to take the customer to court. In addition it helps to insure that the billing staff are treating each customer with the respect and consideration they deserve.

3) Customer Surveys: Another way of monitoring your customer service or support staff is to survey your customers. You could send out a survey every three months to a randomly selected group of customers. Or you could send a follow-up survey to each individual who contacts technical support, sales or billing. While at first it may look like reading all the responses could be a daunting task, remember that only a small percentage, (about 10 percent), will actually fill out and return the survey. Even if everyone returned a completed survey you would only need to review some of them every month to detect possible problems.

Another way of handling surveys is to have an on-line survey that you can direct customers to. The advantage of having the survey on-line is that you can have it programmed to compile results as they come in, giving you an instant overview of your support staff.

4) Do It All: While doing all three methods may seem like overkill, it isn't uncommon for one technique to pick up on a particular situation better than another. The point of doing all this monitoring in the first place is to improve the customer interaction skills of your employees, (and help insure your customers are happy), so check your employee's performance from a variety of sources.

Secret Shoppers, recorded phone conversations, and surveys are each used in all sorts of different businesses and I would suggest that ISP owners could improve their business by aggressively using these tactics as well. Just remember that sometimes when you look in the mirror you don't always like what you see, so be prepared to take quick action if a problem or potential problem is discovered.

—End