KingoftheCove wrote:I think the great cbid melt down of 2017 will someday be a great Harvard Business School Case Study.
Perhaps a Kookamunga Community College Business School Case Study! Some of the lessons were pretty obvious:
1. TEST TEST TEST before you switch over to a new system.
TEST with people that have NOT been involved in creating the new system. Try to break the new system over and over before switching over. A long time ago I, just a regular customer, got to help test updates to the old PalmOS operating system on my Treo smartphone long before they went public, and that is what they wanted me (and lots of other of course) to do - use it like a normal person and let them know the issues.
2. Keep the old system available just in case. I am a subscriber to a internet (um, shall we say, "gaming????") website with thousands of users and they switched over to a new webpage and the whole thing crashed. By the next day they went back to the old system with a big "we are sorry" notice. 6 months later they put the new system back on with no problems (other than I hate the new graphics).
3. Avoid cross-dependent systems. From what I gather, its their whole operation that was messed up because everything is run by one interdependent system, from accounting, to inventory, to orders, to emails and more. This kind of thing often looks good on paper and is what some IT people like to sell to executives, but when one thing goes down, then the whole things goes down. This used to happen in a state I work with that had a large (formerly) interconnected health reporting system that when things went bad in one place, it screwed everything up. They have now "isolated" different key sections of the system so that, for example, if computerized birth reporting screws up, it doesn't shut down computerized death reporting. The IT people HATED it, but now it works.
4. Yes you CAN hire more people to answer phones. No, there is no way to train them to look up orders and solve problems, but they can take down people's information or even just tell them that there is nothing that can be done but wait. Study after case-study will tell you that what gets people the most upset is not being able to get a human on the phone. They can have a simple and honest script that explains they are a temp and that they can't solve the problem but they can tell you what the problem is from the script. Even bad news on the phone is better than nobody picking up the phone. I did this for several disaster operations that I assisted with. The calls to make in-kind donations (mostly people wanting to donate used socks and underwear....) were so overwhelming, we hired temp workers to answer the phone and take peoples name and number and that a representative would get back to them, but explained that it might take a while because of the call volume. They had a script that explained the situation and why certain items were not needed -- like winter coats in July.
5. Communicate! A big yellow highlighted banner at the top of the pages explaining what was going on would have solved a lot of the Customer Relations issues they are having. I get automated emails from cbid all the time, sending out one that explained the problem would have been a big help. I did get an email about the problem -- from another "cigar page" website -- explaining that "it's not us, we are open and have never had problems like that."
Note: None of this is Trish's or the CSR's fault! It was an IT screw-up of monumental proportions that nobody wanted to have happen and they are just dealing with the fallout. If you call, be nice. If it upsets you too much, start shopping elsewhere and send them a polite note telling them that this is why they lost your business. That kind of message REALLY gets the notice of the higher ups.
Oh yes, always ask for free matches....
